Accountability or Torture?
This article first appeared in the Minden Times and Haliburton Echo in September 2025.
Since Pierre Poilievre trampolined from the rural fields of Alberta back into the House of Commons, the chorus of how he is going to keep the government’s feet to the fire has amped from audible to omnipresent. It seems currently inarguable wisdom that the job of the Official Opposition is to keep the government ‘accountable’. Which seems to be defined as an endless game of Gotcha.
If you never have an idea, you can never be held accountable for not accomplishing it. If you have a Big Idea, something ambitious that might take longer than, say, 100 days to accomplish, you would be foolish to articulate it because it will be picked to the bones on a daily basis. Unless, of course, it’s only your job to have the idea, not to bring it to fruition. Because then you can not only never be held accountable for not accomplishing the idea, but you can also squawk like a stuck pig that it has been purloined, stolen from you before you had the opportunity to do what you would have done if only if only if only.
Holding someone’s feet to the fire was a trial by ordeal in Medieval times, practiced -probably not exclusively - by the Inquisition. It was intended to elicit either information or a confession. Or maybe it was an opportunity for God to get a word in on everyday life. The process involved the problematic person walking barefoot on hot coals, and if they somehow survived unscathed, God could be read into the event in some way. The tarnished Joseph Boyden, in The Orenda, describes the Haudenosaunee torturing a captured warrior in this fashion (letting him twist from a rope suspended over a fire, if I remember correctly), which Boyden took as evidence of paganism and the need for his Catholic (the Inquisition guys, right?) mission.
I think the omnipresence and longevity of this idea is that its sheer brutality piques the evil within us. We’ve all had the experience of being burned and we can imagine how much worse the pain could have been – how sharp, how long, how inescapable. So if you really really wanted to be mean to someone, what you might imagine is slowly and painfully burning them: as in - holding their feet to the fire. It bespeaks ultra sincere and sustained intent, an admirable passion for the job at hand, unbridled devotion to doing the necessary, regardless of what it might do to your soul now or in the hereafter.
It's hard to imagine why this approach is appropriate to the everyday business of governance. Surely if governing is the collective intent to act in the interest of the general good, torturing is of little use. I can’t fathom what information is so necessary and so unavailable that such extreme measures are warranted.
Or eliciting a confession: to what? You didn’t achieve your goal? You didn’t fulfill your promise? The failure is evident so a confession is post-facto, stale news, irrelevant. And what if the promise is not an outcome, but a process? Let us recall that Rome was not built in a day.
Or forcing a person do what they said they’d do? First, we are singularly limited in our ability to make others do what we want them to do (politics is not an exception). Secondly, maiming someone with torture is unlikely to make them either more able or more motivated to do what you want them to do.
I rather think the business of politics would be better furthered by practicing another old adage, putting your shoulder to the wheel. Not only does this phrase imply the sustained hard work that is nearly always necessary to make significant change, but also it suggests that adding shoulders – collective action toward a shared goal – would be helpful. It’s what happens spontaneously when a vehicle is stuck – everybody knows what to do without even being told.
So why doesn’t that commonsense, everyday wisdom penetrate to the hallowed halls of government? I think it used to, in the days when politicians were expected to be statesmen, not combatants, when every elected person was accountable to his electorate for representing their interests, not foot-soldiers in a partisan war.
Maybe collaboration still does happen, hidden from the view of the citizenry. Something that looked like collaborative effort toward a common goal was evident in the early days of Canada being appalled at the unapologetic malintent of our southern neighbour. Vestiges of good will and shared intent are still evident.
However, I may not be the only one worried whether it will unravel if the siren call to torture once more rings through the House of Parliament and is repeated in the media until we forget that it reflects an evil that serves no good.
