Roundup: A diminishing work ethic?

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The Senate rose for the summer yesterday after the morning’s royal assent ceremony, which I find to be extremely curious given that they were scheduled to sit for another week and had a whole new batch of bills sent to them when the House rose on Wednesday. You would think that they would want to get started on them, and possibly even pass a few more of them before rising for the summer, but apparently not, and that does trouble me a little bit. We saw this happen at Christmas, and we’re seeing it again now, where the tradition that the Senate sits at least an extra week to get through the raft of bills sent to them by the Commons is being abrogated by Senate leadership that seems less interested in demonstrating that they’re doing the work that needs to be done when MPs take off.

Speaking of Senate leadership, our good friend, the Leader of the Government in the Senate – err, “government representative” sent out a press release yesterday that pat himself on the back for all of the changes to make the Senate more independent, which he equated with making better laws. Why? Well, 13 out of 51 bills in the current session of this parliament were successfully amended by the Senate, so that must mean it’s working! Well, maybe, but it ignores the context that the current prime minister is more willing to entertain some amendments, unlike the previous one. That gives room for the Senate to propose them, but the vast majority of the amendments that do get accepted tend to be technical rather than substantive ones. Not that it doesn’t happen – the government has backed down on a couple of occasions and accepted major amendments (like with the RCMP unionisation bill, which had a Supreme Court of Canada ruling to back up the amendments), but for the most part, the government has resisted substantive amendments to its legislation, so much that you have their new appointees like Senator Pratte openly questioning why the government bothered with creating its “independent Senate” if they’re not going to listen to what it has to say. Not that I’m suggesting that the government should accept every Senate amendment, but there are recent examples where they probably should have, such as with the impaired driving bill that passed this week. There was overwhelming evidence to show that this was almost certainly unconstitutional and would create havoc within the justice system, but the government refused to listen, and senators backed down and let the government reject their amendments rather than insist upon them in the face of such overwhelming testimony. If Harder were really concerned that the Senate was improving legislation, he might not have insisted that once the government rejected those amendments that the Senate back down rather than stand up for some constitutional principles, but he didn’t. Make of that what you will.

Good reads:

  • Now that the cannabis bill has been granted royal assent, focus will start turning toward pardons for those convicted of possession, particularly by the NDP.
  • Also receiving royal assent yesterday was the bill to expunge the records of those who got criminal records for gay sex.
  • The controversial impaired driving bill also got royal assent, so we can expect the constitutional challenges to the legislation to begin any day now.
  • Ralph Goodale says that immigration detention for families and children has decreased in Canada, and that more measures are being introduced to reduce it.
  • A briefing note prepared for the prime minister suggests that DREAMers facing deportation in the US could easily qualify to be resettled in Canada.
  • Catherine McKenna says the government is focusing on achieving our current GHG reduction targets rather than making more ambitious ones.
  • While Scott Moe tries to agitate over a new equalization formula, the existing one was just renewed for another five years in the budget implementation bill.
  • Federal privacy laws are in dire need of an update, and one Liberal MP has tabled a bill to take the first step to do so.
  • The government has announced that two prison farms will be reopening by early next year.
  • An Italian aerospace company dropped their complaint against the government for bid-rigging shortly before they were awarded a sole-source contract. Hmmm…
  • Here’s a look at how Canadian border officials are using the American-maintained TUSCAN database of foreign travellers.
  • A Federal Court judge has approved a settlement deal with Sixties Scoop survivors.
  • House of Commons committees authorised $1 million in travel for the upcoming fall sitting, which is fine, and I certainly hope this won’t become more cheap outrage.
  • Liberal MP MaryAnn Mihychuk denies complaints that she was verbally abusive to Red Cross volunteers during a First Nations evacuation last summer.
  • Surprising nobody, the NDP are trying to fundraise off the US child migrant crisis.
  • Aaron Wherry writes about how Trudeau’s electoral mandate became sidelined by the need to manage the Trumpocalypse.
  • Robert Hiltz wonders where Trudeau’s morality will lead him with the child migrant crisis (though I don’t necessarily agree with all of his prescriptions).
  • Chris Selley praises the legalisation of cannabis as sensible public policy that has been continually threatened by terrible public debate.

Odds and ends:

The government is looking to expand the definition of what legally qualifies as beer in order to help industry innovation.

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