Roundup: Unchecked officers want unchecked financing

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It is now on or about day sixty-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and there has been a crackdown on “traitors” in the country who have been helping Russian forces, sometimes to their own regret later on. Some 400 people have bene detained in the Kharkiv region under anti-collaboration laws, and because of martial law, due process is not always being followed. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wife, Olena Zelenska, says the war has not changed her husband, but has revealed his determination to prevail, and that he’s someone you can rely on. Elsewhere in Europe, a pipeline between Greece and Bulgaria that was built over the pandemic is getting ready to come online, which will help relieve the situation of Russia cutting off gas to that country.

Closer to home, I read with interest this piece by Kathryn May about the various independent officers of Parliament trying to establish a funding mechanism for their offices that essentially bypasses government, in the name of “independence.” I am dubious, because as it stands, these officers already have no accountability, and their asking to remove what few mechanisms that either parliament or the government can rein them in is worrying. We have seen how New Brunswick’s particular independent officers are trying to organise the ability so that they can essentially write their own enabling legislation (the column I wrote on this is here), which one has little doubt that the ones in Ottawa are eying with particular interest because they will want to do the same, because “independence.”

As I note in the column, these officers have moved away from their intended goal of serving Parliament and expanding the investigative capacity of MPs and using their expertise to assist with legislation and government programmes, and have instead become external bodies that rely on public opinion to mount pressure on Cabinet to act. This diminishes Parliament rather than enhances it, and it’s one reason why I really do not think it’s wise to allow these officers to accumulate any more unchecked power—especially as they have entranced the media, who not only venerate them, but refuse to believe they can be at fault, which is again a problem because it means that what these officers say is repeated uncritically, no matter how problematic some of it is (looking at you most especially, PBO). We have a problem with our independent officers, but we refuse to admit it.

Good reads:

  • There were clashes with police, vehicles being towed, and arrests on the first night of the so-called bike rally in Ottawa, but it was a lot of the same grievance tourists.
  • The Liberals’ motion to begin midnight sittings is going to be difficult to manage given that the finite number of interpreters available.
  • A report commissioned by CSIS and the RCMP says that there isn’t enough monitoring of extremist radicalisation in prisons.
  • Moderna has submitted their data to Health Canada for COVID vaccines for children under six, which is a quarter of the dose size for adults.
  • Liberal MP Anju Dhillon has begun debate on another bill to force judicial training, this time on domestic violence—because Rona Ambrose opened that barn door.
  • Leona Alleslev has abandoned her leadership bid after being unable to meet the bar.
  • The PEI legislature voted unanimously to ask the federal government to rename the Confederation Bridge as Epekwit Crossing, after the Mi’kmaq name for the island.
  • Stephen Gordon offers a corrective to the rhetoric being levelled against the Bank of Canada—particularly the fact that they haven’t been printing money.
  • Paul Wells contemplates Poilievre’s stunt in front of the Bank of Canada in light of Poilievre’s past musings about what it was that Stephen Harper got right.
  • My Xtra column talks to Marci Ien about the blood donation deferral period policy.
  • My weekend column walks through the fiction and performance underlying Poilievre’s attack on the Bank of Canada, which is corroding the institution.

Odds and ends:

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