Roundup: Rise of the Potemkin bills

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It is likely the final sitting week of the House of Commons this week, and they can’t go home soon enough. With the whole sorry affair now running on fumes, and all parties reduced to reading their platforms’ press releases instead of doing any actual work, it’s for the best – really. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the Conservatives from introducing a raft of new bills, and making zero headway on them – like the way they insisted on a standalone bill for the Universal Childcare Benefit, and haven’t done anything with it, even though they rammed through their omnibus budget implementation bill, where you think such a provision would actually be relevant. Of course, it’s all political. Some of it is about laying markers for the campaign and things they want to do in the next parliament. Some of it is about checking off items from the Speech From the Throne (like the genetic privacy bill, which is terrible and completely useless, by the way). And then there are a number of tough-on-crime bills that are just hanging there that they’ll try to claim the opposition stalled and dragged their feet on – never mind that it’s the government that sets the agenda, and they’ve not only not brought them forward but wasted a bunch of time on things like concurrence debates on months old committee reports (like the sham of a Health Committee report on the “dangers of marijuana”) when they could have been passing any of these “urgent” bills that they had to table in the dying days. But since they’re not serious about moving forward on any number of these bills, it looks like the anticipated workload in the Senate to tie off things before they too rise for the summer is going to be less than expected, and hopefully that means taking down a few of the more objectionable private members bills (like Michael Chong’s toxic Reform Act) with them when they go. Just remember that if they start to claim that they just couldn’t get this stuff through that it’s all a big charade and they need to be called out on it.

Good reads:

  • The government is cranking out new polls, some of which seem awfully close to the partisan line that might otherwise be done by the party.
  • The Senate is trying to find office space for the move out of the Centre Block that’s within a 10-minute walk of the new chamber, which is a challenge.
  • Harper’s former Senate reform allies are mystified by his apathy on the topic.
  • A US court has overturned the military tribunal conviction of another Guantanamo Bay detainee, leading to the belief that Omar Khadr’s could also be overturned.
  • An internal government memo suggests that while Canada is signing onto new global poverty eradication targets, we have no plans to do anything about it.
  • A new Canadian surveillance satellite has been delayed from launching for two years thanks to our current spat with Russia.

Odds and ends:

Long-time Alberta Conservative MP James Rajotte – “the best cabinet minister we never had” – has decided not to run again.

Former Toronto police chief Bill Blair won the Liberal nomination in Scarborough Southwest.

I was on CBC Radio One’s Day Six, debating the Senate audit with the head of the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation.