Roundup: The problem with private members’ bills

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I’ve written a lot about the problems with private members’ bills, and in my column this week over at Loonie Politics, it came up again given that the lottery for the Order of Precedence was posted. I wrote about it back in the spring when there were a number of problematic ones that the Senate was possibly going to kill (and in some cases did when the clock ran out on them) for good reason – because they were bad bills. While interviewing Liberal Senator George Baker yesterday for a story I was writing, he offered this, which I unfortunately wasn’t able to include in the piece, but every MP should nevertheless read it and take it to heart:

“Here’s a real problem with these private member’s bills: if there’s a fault in the bill, if there’s a word out of place, if there’s an error in the wording or in the intent of a sentence of paragraph – if it’s a private member’s bill, then the Senate is in a quandary because if they amend the bill, then they will in all likelihood be defeating the bill. If you amend a bill in the Senate, if it’s a private member’s bill, it goes back to the Commons and it goes to the bottom of the list for consideration, and then the private member will come to the Senate committee and say you’re going to pass this bill. We had it happen three times in the past two years. They say you’re going to defeat the bill, so the Senate turned around and passed the bill, given the tradition of not defeating something that’s legitimately passed in the House of Commons, and Senate ignored the necessary amendments and they passed bad legislation.”

Baker is absolutely right in that there is a problem – MPs don’t have them drafted very well, and then don’t do their due diligence because these bills are automatically time-allocated by design. That a number of these bills died on the Order Paper in the Senate one hopes might be an object lesson to MPs that they need to do better, but unfortunately, the lesson too many MPs took is that the “unelected and unaccountable Senate” didn’t just rubber-stamp a bill because it passed the Commons. Except, of course, it’s not their job to rubber stamp, and we’ve had an increasing number of bad bills getting through the cracks based on these emotive arguments, and not a few hissy fits along the way *cough*Reform Act*cough*. And now we have bad laws on the books because of it, apparently content to let the courts handle it instead. It’s sad and a little pathetic, to be perfectly honest. We should be demanding out MPs do better, and when they screw up, they need to take their lumps so that they’ll do better next time. Otherwise they won’t learn – or worse, they will take the wrong lesson, and our system will be worse off.

Good reads:

  • The Governor of the Bank of Canada is warning the low dollar is likely going to stay for a while, while there are calls for the government to roll out infrastructure dollars faster. Maybe this time fiscal and monetary policy won’t be at cross-purposes.
  • Here is more on the possible legal battle between the government and the courts on the “mandatory” changeover to Shared Services Canada.
  • Senators are waiting to get to work on the joint committee on assisted dying legislation, but the Commons hasn’t even named MPs to the committee yet.
  • The Veterans Ombudsman won’t reconsider his reappointment – never mind that the rules were changed to even allow reappointments.
  • Ralph Goodale is promising more reviews of the No-Fly List after it caught a six-year-old over the holidays.
  • Ruh-roh! Multiple security breaches have been reported at CFB Halifax.
  • Defeated NDP MP Dan Harris has managed to get out of his bill for satellite offices after he found enough paperwork to exonerate his former staffer involved.
  • Here’s a look at the training that Canada is offering to the Ukrainian military – and what we’re learning from them.
  • Colby Cosh looks into the merits of those legal challenges that TransCanada is launching regarding the demise of Keystone XL.
  • James Bowden looks at the history of the term “Dominion of Canada,” and the later attempts to purge the term from our lexicon.

Odds and ends:

The Citizen found out more about the options weighed for a temporary residence for the PM while 24 Sussex is being renovated.

A TV company is already trying to bid on getting to film those renovations, whether for a documentary or a full-blown reno series.

Dean Del Mastro is likely to learn to fate of his appeal on April 5th.