Tag Archives: Undermining Parliamentary Democracy

The threat of a formal request

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Nathan Cullen started off this week’s Monday Morning Sanctimony with a quote from Young Stephen Harper about the very undemocratic nature of omnibus bills, and how they prevent MPs from voting on individual issues. You know, just to establish who has the monopoly on virtue. Behind him were Guy Caron and Peggy Nash, and together, they outlined the NDP strategy for tackling the undemocratic monster that is the omnibus budget implementation bill.

They’re going to make a formal request to split it up into at least five separate bills.

A formal request you say? I think Stephen Harper just broke out in a sweat. He probably can’t believe they’ve escalated things to…making a formal request.

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Roundup: Begin budget implementation week

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It’s budget implementation debate week in the Commons this week, as Second Reading debate moves ahead under time allocation. The CBC’s Kady O’Malley made a very good point on the weekend that Second Reading debate on this bill isn’t going to matter very much, because it’ll simply be parties reciting their support or outrage into the record, but rather it’ll be the committee where all of the important debate happens. Given that the government has less ability to invoke time allocation on committees, there is still a chance for some more scrutiny and debate to happen there – however they still do have a majority on the committees, so that will be limited nevertheless.

Speaking of committees, here’s a look at the dysfunction creeping into the committee system as a whole – not that anyone can agree as to the causes or solutions. Part of this soul-searching was triggered after Liberal Mauril Bélanger quit the official languages committee after 17 years. Conservative Michael Chong believes there are simply too many committees, so MPs are stretched too thin as they have to do double-duty and are unprepared, and that they do too many studies when not considering legislation. Others, like Ned Franks, think the committees are too large, and that this is part of the symptom of party leaders having too much power over their MPs that said committee members are too afraid to actually speak their minds or have confidence in the expertise they develop. And they’re probably all right, to varying degrees.

The government has signalled that they’re going to put their weight behind a Conservative private member’s bill on banning facemasks during riots. The NDP say they’re supportive in principle, but want some clarification that it won’t muddy the waters with other legal inconsistencies.

It appears that changes to the OAS weren’t in the Conservative platform, because the issue wasn’t discussed until after the election when public servants presented those changes as one of a number of options the government could look at when it comes to addressing the demographic crunch.

Since the Conservatives came to power in 2006 there has been a sharp decline in immigration applications from many Asian countries, due in part to tightening language restrictions. As immigrants can help be bridges between Canada and their countries of origin when it comes to business opportunities, the fact that the world economy is shifting toward Asia means that we could be losing out in the future if this trend continues.

Here’s a look at the examination of protocol at Heritage Committee last week.

And Joe Clark talks about the need for Canada’s foreign policy to innovate as more economic power and demographics shift toward the developing nations of China, India, Brazil, and even Mexico.

Roundup: Six days of debate

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So you know that 420-ish page omnibus budget bill, that affects some fifty Acts, completely rewrites the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Fisheries Act, the Species At Risk Act, removes the Inspector General from CSIS, disappears the immigration backlog and all manner of other measures? Has been subjected to time allocation. The government, feeling generous, is giving it some six days of debate, which really means twenty-something hours in the House at Second Reading, which is hardly anything at all for a bill of this magnitude. The Senate at least will begin pre-studying the bill next week and actually breaking it up into appropriate committees, which the Commons won’t be doing (though as a half-measure, the government will allow a sub-committee at Finance to study all of those environmental changes, which I’m sure will last all of a week, tops). I think John Ivison put it best:

It makes you wonder: What is the point of Parliament? Why not have one whopper of a bill once a year, allow MPs to give it a cursory skim and then send them back to their constituencies to do the ceremonial work of opening supermarkets and attending Rotary barbecues?

If the abuse of time allocation and omnibus legislation continues, that may very well be the way things are headed.

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Where the Liberal “party without walls” will lead

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Wednesday morning, the Liberals are going to be marking the one-year anniversary of their stunning electoral defeat by doing something that has the potential to be political suicide. And they’re doing it with cheers and applause.

Back at their policy convention in January, the party decided adopt a new set of leadership rules that allow a new class of membership to vote in the next leadership contest. Indeed, this new class – known as “supporters,” don’t have to be party members, but simply have to promise that they’re totally not a member of another party, and voila, they can cast their ballot for the next Liberal leader. What could possibly go wrong?

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Roundup: Illegitimate workloads

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MPs are starting to grumble that cuts to the public service are dumping more workload on their offices, while their own budgets are being frozen and scaled back. This is worrying for one very basic reason – that this kind of work isn’t actually an MP’s job. Yes, constituency work has evolved as a means of serving the community and basically showing that they deserve to be re-elected. But it’s not their job. Their job is to hold the government to account, and to do that by controlling the public purse. That means scrutinising the estimates and the public accounts. But along the way, this kind of public service ombudsman role became attached to them, until it’s become the norm for certain departments not to touch a file until the MPs office pushes it forward, and that, my friends is a big problem and it’s something that needs for the person up top to put their foot down, starting with the Clerk of the Privy Council. If, as Bennett alleges in this article, people are just being told to go to their MPs office, then it’s a gross breach of the duties of the public service, and it should be called out.

The government has decided to remove the internal auditors of at least four regional development agencies in favour of letting the Office of the Comptroller General do said audit work. The complication? That the Comptroller General’s budget has also been slashed. Oversight! Accountability! Transparency! Meanwhile, here is a look at the other departments being faced with cuts as of yesterday’s announcements.

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About the Hyer defection

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Bruce Hyer’s decision to leave the NDP caucus yesterday – mere hours after Nathan Cullen crowed about how united and focused the party was – got me thinking about a few things, both when it comes to parliamentary democracy, and the state of the NDP in general.

Hyer, lamenting the “dysfunctional” state of parliament, gave the primary reason for his departure as the heavy hand of the whip. Specifically, on the issue of the long-gun registry, which Mulcair wants to bring back and said that he was going to whip the party on. Hyer bristled, said that this wasn’t party policy (which gives one real pause as to just how much power party leaders have accumulated when it comes to dictating policy, which is supposed to be the role of the membership). That may very well be true, and if the leader is using a three-line whip on an issue that is not party policy, then that is something the NDP has to resolve for themselves.

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Roundup: A pre-emptive strike on Lawful Access

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The Supreme Court has struck down the ability for police to do wiretaps without a warrant, even in the case of an emergency, because of failures of accountability. Why this is important now is the fact that the Lawful Access bill is under consideration, which also deals with warrantless access to information and communications. This could be a pre-emptive signal by the Court to tell MPs to drop the warrantless provisions, lest they be struck down the way in which these wiretapping laws were.

A number of Air Canada pilots staged a “sick out” yesterday – calling in sick as a job action to protest the way they’ve been treated by management and the government. I spoke to a former conservative Labour Minister about this issue a couple of weeks ago, and small surprise, she’s no fan of this government’s tactics.

CBC’s Terry Milewski goes through the way in which the government took the $10 billion out of its own figures when it publicly said the F-35s were only going to cost $15 billion, even though their own internal numbers, procurement guidelines, and agreements to include operating costs after previous Auditor General spankings – gave the $25 billion figure.

Here’s a look at the current size of the PMO, and the number of staffers in there making over $100,000 per year. Fiscal austerity everyone!

The government’s “back office” cuts at the military includes gutting Defence Research and Development, whose work saves lives in the battlefield. But they’re supporting our troops, everyone!

Here’s a great speech from Senator Cowan about Senator Eaton’s “foreign money” inquiry, in which he notices a few similarities to laws that Vladimir Putin passed in Russia to keep foreign influence out. This targeting of charities is part of the budget, so we can expect more of this kind of targeting to come.

Susan Delacourt looks at the double standard by which political parties are exempt from the same advertising and marketing rules that the private sector is bound by, which includes Do Not Call lists.

If you’re in the mood for a wonkish look at the Elections Act, Kady O’Malley looks at the clause about foreigners campaigning in Canada, and the debate in 1999 where MPs revising the law didn’t do their due diligence.

Also wonkish but very important is this essay from Liberal MP John McCallum on improving the estimates process. It’s refreshing to see an MP who actually understands that his job is to scrutinise spending and exercise control over the public purse.

Here’s an excellent takedown of “conscience rights” as being debated in the Alberta election.

And here’s a look at how it’s Tom Mulcair in English, and Thomas Mulcair in French.

Roundup: No lessons learnt with immigration backlog

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Because apparently the government hasn’t learned anything since the last time they tried to impose caps to solve the immigration backlog, the plans to simply legislate it away are likely to open the government up to more court challenges. Meanwhile, language testing is going to become mandatory for certain classes of immigrants, while the government looks to centralise immigrant settlement services.

Here’s a look at how this issue over F-35 costs could impact the way future military procurements are handled, and there are a lot of other procurements on the way. Here’s a look at the way in which military officials told MacKay that the F-35 was the “cheapest option” on the market for future fighter craft, despite the escalating costs. Former Assistant Deputy Minister Alan Williams continues to shred the government’s numbers, including the fact that they were actually planning to buy 79 jets, not 65 (remember those 14 replacement planes that Garneau mentioned yesterday morning? And it this is an example of contract splitting, that’s actually strictly prohibited). And Andrew Coyne takes MacKay to task, and breaks it down that this issue is ultimately not about planes, but about whether we live in a functioning parliamentary democracy, or even want to – which is what we all need to remember when we get bogged down in accounting issues.

About 5500 public service layoff notices were given yesterday, including a big number from Border Services, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and policy positions in Health Canada. Here’s a look at the cuts being made to the military, which includes virtually eliminating parts of our air defence.

The government released its greenhouse gas emissions report yesterday and wow, we’re already a third of the way to our 2020 goals! Err, except that we’ve actually increased slightly from 2009. And while there is a patchwork of provincial plans, we still have no federal plan, despite having been promised one for years, which means that they really had no role to play in any reductions that were made. (More detailed breakdown here, but possible paywall).

There is a good chance the election results in Etobicoke Centre could be overturned in an ongoing court challenge. This is also a warning as to some of the lax training by Elections Canada officials out there.

Conservative MP Bob Dechert touts how religious freedoms “trickle down” to other freedoms in society, rather than you know, focusing on human rights in general and that including religious freedom. Also not mentioned – how creating an office to focus specifically on religious freedoms gives the impression that Canada operates on a hierarchy of rights, privileging religion over other rights in its foreign policy.

Here’s a look at what the demise of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada means at a provincial context – in this case, Alberta.

Joe Clark talks about the Conservatives’ damage to our foreign policy here, with a few observations on the rise of the NDP.

And Bob Rae recalls the debates that brought about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 30 years ago.