Because it’s a story that refuses to die, we now know that both the Bloc and the NDP have rejected the four main votes in the (garbage) Reform Act, and now we await the Liberals, who will in turn doubtlessly reject it as well whenever they finally have their first official caucus meeting, and of course, we have political scientists trying to derive meaning from these refusals, as they have tried with the Conservatives agreeing to the four votes.

The simple truth, however, are that these votes really don’t matter because the legislation is garbage. The power to elect caucus chairs doesn’t require its adoption, as we’ve seen, and the power over the expulsion of caucus members is largely illusory anyway because it tends to depend on what the leader says either way. I would be hugely surprised if the caucus and the leader ever parted ways on whether or not to boot someone out of the club, as that would create a schism and be a sign that the leader was on the way out. As well, the power of the caucus to pressure a leader to resign is actually better off without the Reform Act because what the Act winds up doing is protecting the leader by setting a high threshold and requiring a public declaration to trigger a vote, which can invite retribution. It has been far more effective to push a leader out with one or two public declarations by brave members that signal the writing on the wall rather than demanding a twenty percent threshold.

In the Hill Times piece, the Act’s author, Michael Chong, pats himself on the back for codifying these sorts of caucus decisions, but codifying them is part of the problem. Our Westminster system tends to work best under conventions that aren’t codified because it affords them flexibility and the ability to adapt, whereas codification is inflexible, leads to testing of the system and the pursuit of loopholes and getting around what has been codified. It’s the same with setting that threshold to push out a leader – it winds up insulating the leader more than empowering the caucus, and we’ve seen leaders resign with far less pressure than what this codified system affords, not to mention that by Chong codifying that party leaders must be selected by membership vote in the actual Parliament of Canada Act as a result of this garbage legislation, he has made it even harder for parties to return to the proper system of caucus selection and removal of leaders as we need to return to. Chong has screwed Parliament for a generation, and it would be great if the talking heads would stop encouraging him.

Good reads:

• Dr. Theresa Tam says they are coordinating with provinces on how many more doses they need of vaccines so that the surplus can be donated.
• National Defence says it will review how it selects foreign troops for training after far-right groups in Ukraine boasted that Canadian troops trained them.
• Another senior military figure is returning to the job after taking time off for using racial slurs in the office.
• Library and Archives Canada’s service cuts are making research even more difficult (which is a routine complaint, as standards continue to decline).
• The Privacy Commissioner is fielding complaints about vaccination requirements for civil servants.
• The move to teleworking because of the pandemic is accelerating talk of how to transform the civil service, and decentralising it from Ottawa.
• More groups are warning that the proposed online harms bill will result in an increase in censorship and vast abuses of power to take down content.
• Here is an explainer on the supply chain issues plaguing the global economy.
• A number of safehouses set up to help people get out of Afghanistan are being forced to close for lack of funding.
• The makeshift memorial on Parliament Hill to victims of residential schools has been dismantled with the guidance of the local Algonquin Anishinabeg First Nation.
• The Federal Court granted the Competition Bureau access to Google’s documents as they investigate their advertising practices.
• The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a unionised employee needed to have a labour adjudicator hear her dismissal case, and not a human rights commissioner.
• Independent Senator Josée Forest-Niesing has been hospitalised for COVID in spite of being fully vaccinated.
• There are apparently between three and five Conservative MPs who haven’t been vaccinated yet, and Erin O’Toole is vacillating on his position yet again.
• The Green party’s national council say that they are dropping a legal challenge against Annamie Paul as her resignation continues to plod along.
• There are questions as to what is happening with Liberal-turned-Independent new MP Kevin Vuong, who has made himself scarce to media.
• Maclean’s interviews the new mayors of Edmonton and Calgary.
• Jen Gerson gives a few kicks to the Committee on Un-Albertan Activities report, and how it mostly highlighted the incompetence of successive governments.
• My weekend column calls for an end to hybrid sittings permanently, given how much damage they do to Parliament, and the interpretation staff.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1451740632163225600

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