Sound the alarm, because MPs – and Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux in particular – are talking about changing the Standing Orders again. Lamoureux has apparently committed to bringing back Frank Baylis’ package of reforms, most of which were are either half-measures, or wrong-headed and will have unintended consequences that will simply make things worse. But as with anything, as soon as it’s been proposed, it becomes the politician syllogism – “Something must be done. This is something. Therefor we must do this.” Apparently, nobody learned a gods damned thing after Michael Chong’s garbage Reform Act, and we’re about to go through yet another attempted exercise that will wind up going badly. (I wrote about Baylis’ proposals last year).

There are a few things in the Lamoureux interview that I did want to highlight first, which is the talk about eliminating votes on Mondays and Fridays – that’s pretty much a given considering that they already don’t have votes on Fridays, barring exceptional circumstances like a vote-a-thon, and they rarely have them on Mondays either, and when they do, it’s usually in the evening, by which time most MPs should have arrived in Ottawa. I’m also going to give some major side-eye to MPs who complain that they could be doing more work in their ridings, because their jobs are in Ottawa. Their jobs are to hold the government to account by doing the work of things like scrutinizing the estimates, going through the Public Accounts, and studying legislation in committee. Their jobs are not actually about doing “casework” with constituents, most of which should be done by the civil service. An MP’s office is not supposed to be a Service Canada desk, and I wish that they would stop pretending that it was.

The other part that I’m getting increasingly irate with is the talk about developing a parallel chamber for the House of Commons, and dressing it up as “efficiency.” No. There is no reason for us to have one. It makes more sense in Westminster where they have 650 MPs, and there are fewer opportunities for them to have take-note debates on things in the main chamber, but we really don’t have either the need, or frankly the bodies to do it, because we already have enough of our MPs assigned to more than one committee outside of House Duty, so there are already not enough hours in the day for most of them. We also don’t need the hours for added “debate” on government bills – we need to reform how we’re structuring debate period. We don’t need additional time for private members’ business because it will only bottleneck in the Senate and die on the Order Paper anyway. There is zero rationale for it – but there is currently a romance with the notion, and so they keep proposing it. No. Stop it.

Good reads:

• We are getting some more details on the plans to evacuate 300 Canadians from China, including some permanent residents, but not all.
• Heritage minister Stephen Guilbeault had to refute the torqued and false allegations about supposed plans to “license media” from the Yale Report on broadcasting.
• The government will be tabling a version of Rona Ambrose’s bill on sexual assault training for judges. Let’s just hope this version isn’t unconstitutional or unworkable.
• Public Works is looking for some design help as part of the revamp of the blocks facing Parliament Hill, which would include Sparks Street.
• Teck Resources say they plan for their Frontier mine to be carbon-neutral by 2050 (never mind that the mine is still not looking to be economically viable).
• Here is a look at some provincial and federal research dollars that have association with Huawei in Canada.
• Saudi Arabia has made a payment for those LAVs that we’re building for them, but they’re still billions of dollars behind in what they owe.
• Stories are emerging from Senator Lynn Beyak’s aborted attempt at anti-racism training, during which she declared that she was Métis.
• Peter MacKay is getting precious about his tweets about Trudeau and yoga – but won’t take them down because they’re “factual.”
• MacKay’s media handlers then got shirty with a reporter who asked about the tweets, and shut down the interview after she asked about it.
• The talk is that because the Conservative leadership race is so “short” (it’s not), they’ll need to rely on “digital dominance.” I’m dubious.
• The Green Party released their leadership contest rules, and already some members are objecting to the modest financial requirements.
• Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott took to the op-ed pages to defend their medical assistance in dying legislation now that it’s been struck down.
• Susan Delacourt reports that the chargé d’affairs in Washington, Kirsten Hillman, will be named the ambassador – the first civil servant in the post in two decades.
• Colby Cosh has an interesting meditation on the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, and the ordinary coronaviruses associated with the common cold.

Odds and ends:

My latest video for Loonie Politics looks at how the Conservative leadership is taking shape.

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.