Roundup: The problem with feel-good legislation

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There was a story out over the weekend about a recently-passed private member’s bill about cancers being faced by firefighters, but how it’s, well, a little bit useless. As well-meaning as the bill is, and there are a lot of well-meaning private members’ bills, it’s also one of those terrible “national strategy” bills that plague our Parliament year-in and year-out.

The thing about “national strategy” bills are that they’re trying to legislate in areas of provincial jurisdiction, largely around healthcare, but sometimes around certain environmental concerns, and so on. Because MPs know that people are about these issues that aren’t in their areas of jurisdiction, they instead come up with these feel-good bills that call on the federal government to coordinate with provinces to create a “national strategy” about whatever the issue is, in the hopes that they’ll come to some common ground, or the like. But also remember that these bills are not only about an area of provincial jurisdiction, but they also can’t spend any money, so they don’t create any incentives that the federal government can use to bring provinces on-side. So about the most that these bills tend to do is raise some awareness about the issue in question in the media (as is demonstrated by the CBC piece over the weekend that I’m referencing here), but aside from that, it’s a lot of thoughts and prayers.

My point here is largely that we see these bills time and again, which largely raise a lot of false hopes, and which can be a bit of a waste of peoples’ time. MPs get one shot a private member’s bill in any given parliament, and a lot of them don’t even get that because of the fact that it’s a lottery system that determines the order in which they appear, and for them to waste that shot on a feel-good bill that doesn’t actually do anything just gets tiresome after a while, and it can be really hard on the people whose hopes have been raised for nothing to happen, because it’s just a feel-good bill.

Ukraine Dispatch:

One civilian was killed by Russian shelling on Kharkiv, and seven wounded in a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia. Elsewhere, there appears to have been a blast on the Russian bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1680272192993472513

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1680525991418929156

Good reads:

  • Wildfires have burned over 100,000 square kilometres, breaking records.
  • Sean Fraser unveiled a pathway to permanent residency for Ukrainians in the country on visitor visas, as well as expanded eligibility for Hong Kongers.
  • Documents show that our intelligence services warned the government that TikTok gave false assurances about their privacy and data protections.
  • The federal taxpayers’ ombudsman says he’s being inundated with complaints from people getting clawbacks for CERB overpayments after they repaid them already.
  • Talk of foreign interference allegations needs increased media literacy—but so does protecting our democracy, and not enough people seem interested in that.
  • Conservative MP Jasraj Hallan posed with guys in anti-LGBTQ+ shirts, and of course Poilievre is remaining silent about it.
  • There remains a great deal of opposition to the rail bypass at Lac-Mégantic.
  • Here’s a look at the state of the Ontario Liberal party leadership race.
  • Heather Stefanson saying that searching the landfill for the bodies of those Indigenous women could “jeopardise the judicial process” is explained here.
  • Philippe Lagassé sees you debating post-election government formation and is very disappointed in all of you for getting it so wrong.
  • My weekend column looks at the problem of the RMCP resisting explicit policy direction from the minister, which is one more reason they should be dismantled.

Odds and ends:

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