It’s not the first time I’ve written on this topic, and it certainly won’t be the last. Yesterday’s column by David Akin about making MPs continue to work on Fridays has me itching to reiterate a few points, even if some of Akin’s writing style makes me cringe a little. (Seriously, PROC is an “obscure but important” committee? Really?) Akin makes good points in that we are already seeing a greater diversity in people running and getting elected, and more women running and getting elected than ever before, and that people who put their name on the ballot know that the job entails actually being in Ottawa five days a week for roughly half the year. And really, that’s one of the points that makes me a bit crazy when we keep circling back to these discussions about making parliament “family friendly.” Parliament is not just another workplace, and you can’t apply the same standards to it that you would with any other job. We all know that a great deal of sacrifice is involved with the job, which is why we compensate MPs fairly well for it (though one could quite easily argue that they are underpaid, though populist sentiment means that argument will never win the day). Even more crazy making were MPs on Procedure and House Affairs committee saying things like “It’s special being here,” while trying to figure out how to vote from their riding or telecommute to the job in Ottawa, never mind that the job involves being in Ottawa because it relies on building personal relationships. No, it’s not “special” to be in Ottawa – it’s the job you signed on for. Being present to vote is what you signed on for. If you didn’t want to be in Ottawa but still serve the public, you could have run for local city council, but no, you wanted to play a federal role. That means being in Ottawa. It doesn’t mean being here year-round, and clearly it’s not given the growing number of constituency weeks, but constituency work is not what your job is. Your job is to hold the government to account, which means being present, debating, reading the Estimates and the Public Accounts, doing committee work, grilling ministers and department staff, and engaging with stakeholders as part of that job. All of that is done here. Sure, helping people with passport forms is all well and good, but it’s not actually your job. In fact, the growing MP role as civil service ombudsman is a distressing turn of events, because it starts to subtly politicise the system, but it also takes away from the accountability role. We are already in a crisis of civic literacy in this country. Having MPs justify the fact that they don’t feel the need to be in Ottawa to do their jobs, and to wrap that justification up in the flag of being family-friendly is a problem. Yes, it’s tough, and marriages break up with too much frequency, but the system already bends over backwards to accommodate spouses and families. The reality remains, however, that this is not a job that you can do from home, and candidates needs to go into it with their eyes open rather than making excuses to shirk their duties once they get here.
Tag Archives: Environment
QP: In advance of the deployment motion
As Ottawa dug itself out from a record snowfall, everyone was ready to go in advance of the debate on the new ISIS mission that would happen after QP. Rona Ambrose had her mini-lectern ready to go, and she read a question about how the PM could possibly withdraw our CF-18s from the fight against ISIS. Justin Trudeau noted that one opposition party wanted them to do more and the other wanted them to do it less, and they had a comprehensive plan. Ambrose accused him of stepping back against the fight against terror, to which Trudeau assured her that our allies were happy with our stepping up our efforts. Ambrose accused Trudeau of picking and choosing Canadian values, to which Trudeau reminded her about what people voted for. Ambrose then accused the government of burning through the surplus her government left — eliciting laughs from the government benches — and wondered how much deficit they would pile on. Trudeau reminded her that they actually left a deficit, and they were committed to delivering growth. Ambrose lamented job losses, to which Trudeau again noted committing to growth. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and blasted the government for not preventing job losses at Bombardier. Trudeau insisted that they would grow the economy in responsible ways. Mulcair demanded again in English, and Trudeau repeated his answer with an added lament about shouting about problems. Mulcair then changed topics and demanded to know if the new mission was a combat mission. Trudeau said that they were doing what was most effective. Mulcair gave another go, and got pretty much the same answer.
QP: Second verse, same as the first
A very blustery day on Parliament Hill, and all three main leaders made it through the rapidly accumulating snowfall in order to make it to QP on time. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on desk, reading a question about pulling the fighters out of Iraq, insisting that it means that Canada is not fighting terrorism. Justin Trudeau said that they consulted with allies and came up with a robust new plan to do what was needed. Ambrose insisted that military action and fighting was necessary, to which Trudeau quoted to her the US coalition leader saying that they couldn’t bomb their way out of the crisis, and that they needed training. Ambrose switched to the issue of new funding for UNRWA, which was found to be linked to Hamas. Trudeau noted his meeting with Ban Ki-moon, and the commitment to re-engaging with the world. Stephen Blaney was outraged that some of our aid money could find its way to terrorists groups, at which Karina Gould reminded him that our aid money was neutral. Blaney then called the decision to send Griffon helicopters with the new trainers “bungling,” but Harjit Sajjan merely confirmed that yes, the helicopters would be deployed. Thomas Mulcair was up next, outraged that more trainers over in Iraq would mean more risk. Trudeau reminded him that Canadians always stand up to do their duty when called upon. Mulcair asked again in French, and got the same answer in French. Mulcair mentioned his trip to Saskatchewan, and demanded EI reforms to help people in the oil price drop. Trudeau said that they were working hard to meet that demand. Mulcair decried a $6.5 billion shortfall for grain farmers without the Canadian Wheat Board. Lawrence MacAulay noted that government no longer had ties to the former Board.
Roundup: A vote for support
We have the motion on the Order Paper now for the debate and eventual vote on the newly refocused mission in Syria and Iraq, and to the relief of those of us who care about things like Crown Prerogative and the powers of the executive, it’s crafted simply in the language of supporting the mission. This is critical, because asking for authorisation is a giant can of worms that nobody really should want to even contemplate opening, but even with this language, it’s going to cause headaches going forward. To recap, asking for authorization is something that launders the prerogative and thus the government’s accountability. When something goes wrong, they can shrug and say “the House voted for the mission,” and to varying degrees, the Harper government did this, particularly with relationship to Afghanistan. These non-binding votes are a rather unseemly bit of political theatre that purports to put the question to MPs – because apparently they need to have buy-in when we send our men and women in uniform into danger, or some such nonsense – and it gives parties like the NDP a chance to thump their chests about peacekeeping and pandering to pacifistic notions (and does anyone seriously buy that nobody is trying to stop the flow of money, arms and fighters to ISIS without Canada butting to the front of the line to finger-wag at them?), and parties like the Conservatives a chance to rail that they were doing so much more when they were in charge (when they weren’t), or when they were in charge, to pat themselves on the back for everything they were doing (when really, it tended to be a bare minimum at best, or a symbolic contribution at worst). Of course, all of this could be done with a simple take-note debate without a vote, which is how it should be, because a vote implies authorisation, and that’s how the NDP have read each and every vote in the past, and they will loudly remind everyone in QP and elsewhere about it. Trudeau has been trying to keep expectations measured by saying that they recognise the role of the executive in making these decisions – but he went and proposed a vote anyway, muddling the role of MPs in this situations like these. That role, to remind you, is to hold the government to account, so if you’re going to have a vote on a military mission, then one might as well make it a confidence vote because foreign policy and control of the military is at the heart of the Crown’s powers. (These authorisation votes that aren’t confidence measures are playing out in the UK right now, which is making a mess of their own system, for the record). Trudeau should have known better than to continue this pattern of confusion and left it at a take-note debate, like it should be. A vote, whether it’s an actual authorisation or just a declaration of support, only serves to make the waters murky, which we need our governments to stop doing before they do lasting harm to our system of Responsible Government.
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Roundup: Weak sauce mea culpa
It only took a hundred days, but the NDP membership finally got some kind of a public mea culpa from leader Thomas Mulcair over the way the last election went down, and good news – he takes full responsibility for what happened! But much as Rebecca Blaikie’s interim report goes soft on what Mulcair did wrong, Mulcair’s own reckoning of events is still going pretty soft on things that happened as opposed to some of the myths that are being built up. Things like the balanced budget pledge, which Mulcair said overshadowed the “social democratic economic vision” where they thought they could squeeze all kinds of money out of corporate taxes, CEOs and tax havens, which any competent economist will remind you that you certainly can’t get the kind of money they’re talking from any of those sources. Mulcair goes soft on the observation that they lacked an over-arching narrative that could be easily communicated, when problem was less of a lack of an overall message, but a really poor message that they settled on, which was then badly communicated because, well, the message was poor to begin with. The message, of course, being “good, competent public administration,” and after Canadians had put up with a prime minister who had all of the pizzazz of dull wood varnish, Mulcair would show up to debates, smize like his life depended on it, and proceeded to look like someone on Valium because he was more intent on controlling his temper than he was in engaging with real ideas to present rather than some tired – and in come cases baffling – talking points. And this is what they sent up against most dynamic and charismatic political leader in over a generation. Couple this with some pretty disastrous policy rollouts – recall the initial release of their “costed platform” that didn’t actually have any breakdowns of numbers, but had some nonsense headings like “helping Canadians in need” that journalists rightly questioned, and when we did get numbers, they were based on some wrong assumptions. Campaigns matter, and both Mulcair and Blaikie have been downplaying that it was a poorly run campaign. Mulcair’s letter also contained some rather cryptic references to “overhauling the way caucus works,” but it’s vague, and isn’t owning up to their over-centralization that made the Conservatives’ centralisation efforts look elementary. That centralization has been carrying on to this day, which, when compared to the Liberals’ governing by cabinet rather than the leader’s office, and where their ministers are answering the bulk of their questions off-the-cuff and on their feet while the NDP (Mulcair included) have their scripts in front of them every time they rise in the Chamber, it looks stifling and controlling. So far, I’m not seeing much of a willingness to confront these truths so that they can do something to change them, which the party membership is going to have to weight when the leadership review comes in April.
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QP: Demands for free votes on Energy East
Monday, and old habits are starting to rear their heads — neither Trudeau nor Mulcair were present, Trudeau in meetings, and Mulcair in La Loche, Saskatchewan. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on desk, and read a question about jobs in the resource sector, demanding support for their opposition day motion on Energy East. Jim Carr noted that they needed to establish a credible process if they wanted to get resources to market. Ambrose decried Trudeau killing off Northern Gateway with the tanker ban on the west coast, to which Carr reminded her of the lack of trust in the regulatory process under the previous government. Ambrose tried again to get support for the motion, but got another reply about the environmental assessment process. Maxime Bernier was up next, decrying deficits, to which Bill Morneau reminded him that the debt-to-GDP ratio was still going down. Bernier cried that only businessmen create investment, not governments, and then demanded confirmation that the Conservatives left a budget surplus. Morneau insisted that the fiscal update released at the end of last year showing a deficit was accurate. Leading off for the NDP was Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, who raised one of the interviews from last night’s CBC special, and demanded help for the manufacturing sector. Navdeep Bains rose up, and said that an innovation agenda for the sector was on the way. Boutin-Sweet demanded a plan yesterday, to which Bains insisted that they have it. Irene Mathyssen took over to read the same again in English, and got the same answer.
Reading the same question four times in a row! #accountability #QP
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) February 1, 2016
Roundup: The needed reforms to the Estimates
Democratic reforms remain the topic of discussion on the Hill, following Dominc LeBlanc’s appearance at the Procedure and House Affairs committee on Thursday, and some of what he’s talking about is necessary – most importantly, reform to the Estimates process. The Liberals had promised during the election that they would reform the process so that the Estimates were a) readable, and b) resembled the Public Accounts, so that the latter could be used to check over the former. There is probably no greater reform that needs to happen than this, because it’s the job of MPs to hold government to account by means of controlling the public purse. The Estimates are how they plan to spend the money, and the Public Accounts are the accounting of how it was spent. When both are reported using different accounting methods, and with the Estimates currently being largely unreadable to the layperson, it makes that accountability nigh impossible to do. It’s no wonder that the process has largely devolved to voting them through at all stages with no actual discussion or scrutiny (as they did in December, only for the Senate to catch their mistakes when they ballsed it up in their haste). It’s also why MPs have been consistently fobbing off that homework to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the Auditor General, and increasingly the Senate, while ministerial visits to committee to discuss the Estimates for their departments are spent answering questions on issues of the day rather than the Estimates they were there to talk about. Add to that, there’s the “deemed” rule, whereby Estimates are deemed to be agreed to and passed after a certain date, so MPs couldn’t even hold them up if they wanted to. It’s so entirely broken, which is why the Liberal promise to fix this system is so damned important. Of course, with the good comes the bad – talk of eliminating Friday sittings, possibly with longer days on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to compensate (but what about the “family friendly” elimination of evening sittings so that MPs can have dinner with their families?), and assurances that they wouldn’t actually be getting Fridays off, but working in their constituencies. The problem there is that constituency work is not actually part of an MP’s job – the ombudsman role they play on behalf of their constituents’ interactions with the civil service has grown over the years until it’s metastasised into this beast now where there are stories that the immigration department won’t touch files until they are forwarded by the MP’s office (so far down the slippery slope to corruption it’s alarming), and MPs continue to spend their resources doing this work rather than their actual jobs of scrutinizing the Estimates or legislation. In other words, eliminating Friday sittings makes this problem worse, not better. LeBlanc also did agree that a proposal to ban applause in the Commons may be something else worth considering to help improve decorum, and I would agree that even more than the constant sanctimonious tut-tutting about heckling, applause and scripts are the bigger problems that should be tackled if we want to be serious about making changes to the way our MPs do business.
That's my position. https://t.co/9kfUuRCBBX
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 29, 2016
QP: Pipeline laments
Thursday in the Commons, and Justin Trudeau was present, but Rona Ambrose wasn’t. That left it up to Opposition House Leader Andrew Scheer to lead off, mini-lectern on his desk, and he read a lament for the government adding more red tape to pipeline projects. Trudeau insisted that the only way to get resources to tidewater was to do it in an environmentally sustainable way. Scheer wanted to know if Western Liberal MPs would be free to vote on the Conservatives’ opposition motion, to which Trudeau panned it as a rehash of their failed policies. Scheer took a dig at Trudeau meeting with celebrities instead of unemployed Canadians. Trudeau hit back with a reminder of the need for sustainability. Candice Bergen was up next, asking if downstream emissions would be part of the new environmental assessment process, to which Catherine McKenna confirmed that it would be a consideration. Bergen decried the uncertainty for ongoing assessments, but Jim Carr praised the change in tone from the current government where environment and natural resource development happened together. Thomas Mulcair was up next, lamenting that the TPP would cost jobs but was being signed anyway, but Trudeau assured him that the signature would just be a technical step that would allow further debate. Mulcair switched to French to continue to hammer on the meaning of the signature, to which Trudeau reiterated that signature and ratification were different. Mulcair changed to lamenting reducing taxes for the well-off instead of tackling inequality, to which Trudeau reminded him that they reduced taxes to the middle class and increased them on the one percent. Mulcair asked again, and Trudeau reiterated his answer.
Roundup: Speaker Regan’s futile vow
The Speaker’s lecture about heckling versus ideas on Tuesday continues to make the rounds, alongside the Samara study that I wrote about the other day, but as Nick Taylor-Vaisey concludes, the vows to end heckling won’t last, which is just as well. What gets me are the constant head-shaking about how heckling wouldn’t happen in any other workplace, so why should it be acceptable in parliament. My response would be, and will always be, is that parliament is different, and that it shouldn’t be like any other workplace. Consider it a kind of by-product of parliamentary privilege that keeps the institution self-governing and in its own particular bubble against some of the laws and regulations that apply to other people. Parliament is special because nowhere else does this kind of debate happen, is there an accountability function to be had in open and on public display, and nowhere else is the exchange of ideas both vigorous, theatrical, and relevant to whether or not that MP will continue again past the next election. Once again, I will offer the caveat that yes, there is boorish and sexist heckling that should be called out and stamped down, but that is not necessarily representative of all heckling, and really, we haven’t seen the likes of a “calm down, baby” that made the John Crosbie/Sheila Copps exchanges so much a part of our collective memory. We don’t have MPs singing the national anthem to drown out the other side, or setting off firecrackers. And it’s a safe bet that the vast majority of MPs aren’t showing up for debates inebriated – something that could not be assured during the days of martini lunches and copious alcohol all around the Hill. This is probably the calmest our QPs have been in a generation, and yet we are still faced with these constant admonitions that it’s still somehow terrible. No, it’s not. If Elizabeth May can’t hear, that’s as much a function of the terrible acoustics in the Chamber, where you can’t often hear what’s being said even during the dullest of regular debates, than it is the reactions of those around her. If there is an issue that should be tackled, it’s the constant applause and standing ovations, and the use of scripts that has destroyed the debating ability of our MPs. Heckling is honestly the least of our worries.
Roundup: The consideration of anachronisms
You know that I can’t resist a good Senate piece, and lo, University of Ottawa law professor Adam Dodek provides us with one, urging the government to move on what constitutional Senate reforms that are within its grasp – the things they can change without the provinces, namely property requirements, the net-worth requirement, and the use of “he” in the constitution. While the third seems blatantly obvious, one wonders whether there are other instances in the constitution, in either official language, where the gender defaults to male, and whether that would need to be updated at the same time. As for the property and net worth requirements, one has to ask what purpose changing them serves in the modern age. The $4000 figure in both real property and net worth has never been inflation adjusted, so the figures present little barrier to anyone actually qualifying in this day and age, as the way that they came to accommodation to allow Sister Peggy Butts to sit in the Senate are a good example. (Well, except for freelance journalists, in case anyone still harbours the illusion that I’m lobbying for a Senate seat). While Dodek posits that the requirements were part of an attempt to create a landed gentry in Canada that failed, my own reading of history has tended to an attempt to attract a more “serious” sort to the Upper Chamber, and let’s not forget that these were the days when there was a property requirement to exercise the franchise at all (and until the rules changed, women who owned property could actually vote, though almost none did). The property requirement does help to serve as a kind of shorthand for the primary residence question (except when monkeyed around to fit appointments into inappropriate areas for political considerations *cough*Mike Duffy*cough*), and in Quebec, it has the added significance of the historical senatorial divisions that marked minority enclaves that were to have designated representation. While those divisions have not been updated, one supposes that there is a debate to be had as to whether to update them to better reflect the modern Quebec, or to keep them as is in order to serve as a historical touchstone to remind us about the Senate’s role in giving voice to and protecting minority communities. Which leads us back to the question of why we want to undertake this exercise in the first place – is it necessary? I’m not seeing the pressing need for these changes, other than the usual “because it’s anachronistic” excuse. That’s the thing about a parliamentary system though – much of it is anachronistic, but that’s part of the beauty, because it is a direct touchstone to the evolution of our system, such as why the monarch is not allowed in the Commons. That the Senate has anachronistic property requirements that are no great barrier to membership demonstrates the evolution of our system in a very real way, and keeps parliament grounded. To do away with the harmless requirements for the sake of modernizing it risks losing that historical touchstone that is so absent from many things in politics these days, to our detriment.