A new parliamentary report says that arcane rules are keeping MPs from doing their jobs when it comes to scrutinising the estimates. It’s good that they acknowledge that, and I’m still working my way though reading the report, but some of those rules aren’t that arcane and were more recent additions in order to keep the opposition from bogging down the business of government (this being the “deemed” rule whereby estimates are “deemed adopted” if they pass a certain date on the calendar). And MPs have always had the ability to change those rules whenever they decided it was time to start taking the estimates process more seriously, so this tone of them being the poor victims of traditions dating back to the Magna Carta really reads hollow to me, sorry to say. There are also calls in the report to strengthen the role of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, which is all well and good, but a) good luck getting this government to agree to it, and b) we should be careful not to make it tempting for MPs to simply fob off their responsibilities of scrutinising the estimates to him more than they already are.
Uh oh – when Christian Paradis was minister of Public Works, he had the department roll out the welcome mat for firms from his riding. Apparently the Ethics Commissioner have him a talking to about the fact that while it’s all well and good to represent your constituents, as a minister there are limits. But like Paradis said, these are all just learning experiences, right?