Parliament resumes today, and it’s going to be the start of a heavy legislative agenda, as the government’s months of consultations start wrapping up and decisions get to start being made. And if you needed a reminder about everything on everyone’s plates, here’s a handy piece about the priorities and challenges for the three main parties this autumn, and Kady O’Malley’s list here too. That said, a Huffington Post article was circulating over the weekend that set my teeth on edge, “proving” that the spring session was the least-productive in decades.
Why this is a problematic measure is that it’s focusing solely on the number of bills passed over those ten months (really, only about five of which was when Parliament was sitting). It’s a purely quantitative analysis that says absolutely nothing about the context of what happened, or about the bigger picture of what the government accomplished. And really, I will be the first person to say that the decision to pull the plug on the Friday they did was about forcing the Senate to pass the assisted dying bill, when they were actually scheduled to sit for a couple of more days, during which time they could have passed two more bills that were ready to go, but they didn’t, and that does deserve mention, but that’s not in there at all. What we get are Conservatives cherry-picking trips and “photo ops” – because who needs multilateral engagement, am I right? – rather than on some of the additional hurdles that the session faced. One of the biggest hurdles was around that assisted dying bill, and the fact that the opposition parties demanded far more hours of debate at second reading than the bill deserved (remember, second reading is about the principle of the bill, not the specifics), and they got huffy when the government tried to push those additional (useless) hours of debate into late nights to keep the agenda going, and when they tried to bring in a procedural hammer to move bills through, the Opposition blew their tops and we wound up with The Elbowing and the subsequent fallout from that. Let me remind you that the Conservatives fully participated in the days of psychodrama that followed, and now they have the gall to say that the government didn’t get enough done? Seriously? They were equal participants in determining the Commons’ schedule of what took place (especially the demands for more second reading debate on that assisted dying bill), and I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that when they were in government, they sat on that bill and didn’t move it despite its deadline. So yes, I find this whole accusation to be the height of cheek, and the analysis should have included far more context around the events of the spring.
Good reads:
- The Global Fund replenishment conference in Montreal raised almost $13 billion to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, while Bono praised Canada’s role on the world stage.
- Catherine McKenna is moderating her language somewhat around emissions targets.
- Avi Lewis reiterates that he’s not interested in the NDP leadership, and is talking about the Leap Manifesto as though it could become its own party.
- Documents show that the dispute over Shared Services Canada that led to the Chief Statistician’s resignation has been brewing for months.
- Here’s a look at some of the difficulties facing ratification of CETA that Chrystia Freeland is off to Europe to try to solve.
- The previous government not making changes to the Citizenship Act retroactive meant that a bunch of people have lost their status due to an arcane rule.
- The small marginal parties gather to whine about the current system and hope for electoral reforms that give them seats.
- Rona Ambrose says that a peacekeeping mission is just about a UN security seat, and we should focus instead on “fighting terrorism,” as though it’s a military solution.
- General Vance says that our NATO mission in Latvia is taking shape.
- Paul Wells talks to the head of Joint Operations Command about the mission in Iraq, and notes his tone of caution.
Odds and ends:
While Justin Trudeau heads to the UN General Assembly, here’s a look at the difficulties that simultaneous interpreters there face.
Part of Prince William’s visit will include adding a new piece to BC’s Black Rod, which will be symbolic of reconciliation with the province’s Indigenous population.
The by-election date for Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner has been set for October 24th.