Tag Archives: Kevin Vickers

Roundup: The lobbyist’s Senate speculation

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Courtesy of the Hill Times comes a hot mess of an article that speculates that the new independent Senate is going to have a much more active policy role upfront in the future, which…I’m not so sure about. The thesis of this former MP-turned-lobbyist is that the Trudeau gang knows exactly what they got into with their Senate reform plan (err, I’m really, really dubious about that based on what I’ve seen to date), and the loss of top-down Senate management means that Senators need to be brought into the legislative process from the conceptual stage rather than in their current role as revising and amending. Okay, so while his point that no government can take the Senate for granted anymore is true to a certain extent, most governments have paid a price when they did and found that the Senate wasn’t willing to put up with it. And it’s this particular passage that really makes my skin crawl:

Mr. Jordan said that with new dynamics in the Red Chamber, Senators could prove to be a useful ally of opposition parties and lobbyists, especially in majority governments when governing parties can pass any legislation they wish in the House of Commons. So, if an opposition party or a lobby group wants to stop the government from doing anything, their best bet would be to reach out to Senators.

“You could now go to the Senate and rally support,” Mr. Jordan said. “Make your case.”

It feels a little too much like Jordan, a lobbyist himself, is licking his chops at the prospect. It also undermines the role of the Senate as a kind of constitutional safeguard, who has the power of unlimited veto and of institutional independence to say no to a prime minister with a majority when there is no other option to stop an unconstitutional bill, not to become a partisan competition with the Commons. In fact, the Supreme Court reference stated explicitly that it was not the role of the Senate to be that competitor, and yet this is what Jordan both envisions and says that Trudeau must have known when he started making his push for a more independent upper chamber. (Again, I have my doubts). Turning the Senate into the tool of the opposition and lobbyist allies is antithetical to its nature and its purpose, and for him to start putting this kind of nonsense out there is not helpful, whether as a point of speculation or as a meditation on where senate reform is headed. And if anything, it proves that Trudeau didn’t know what can of worms he opened when he kicked his senators out of caucus, but here we are.

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Roundup: Another day talking in circles

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We’re in for yet another round of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the subject of the electoral reform process, and this time it’s from the NDP who are moving a supply day motion to try and get the proposed parliamentary committee to reflect their particular gamed composition rather than a composition that reflects the House of Commons – which, I will remind you, was elected entirely fairly and correctly under how our system is supposed to operate, where we elect individual seats in separate and simultaneous elections. Demands that the committee should reflect the popular vote ignore the facts that a) the popular vote is a logical fallacy that does not actually exist since there were 338 separate elections and not just one, and b) the composition that the NDP are demanding is not actually proportional to the “popular vote,” as they are giving the Bloc and the Green Party an oversized share of the seats and votes. And rather than just thirty minutes of this endless repetition as we might hear in QP, no, it will be the whole day in the Commons, minus one hour for private members’ business. And we’ll be subjected to the sanctimonious speeches of the NDP (of which they will read the same speech in English and French ad nauseum, only changing the riding names mentioned), followed by baying from the Conservatives that what we really need is a referendum, and the odd interjection from Elizabeth May that she deserves a vote on the committee and that no, we don’t need a referendum because it’s not a constitutional issue (except that certain kinds of electoral reform are actually constitutional issues, albeit likely with the simplest amending formula). And then there are the Liberals, where we’ll get some of the usual saccharine from Maryam Monsef, some sharper rebukes from Mark Holland, and the odd backbencher repeating the talking points about Canadians demanding a change to the system. There won’t be any substantive issues discussed, and while I will be the first to say that yes, process is important, so long as each side tries to game the process to fit their own purposes, we’ll just keep talking in circles and go nowhere. Which, really, is where this discussion should go and we should instead invest in a programme of civic literacy instead so that people can actually learn how the system works. But in the absence of that, I’m ready to declare that we should nuke the whole thing from orbit.

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Roundup: Jumping the satellite offices gun

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The NDP are signalling that they have received a hopeful sign in their attempt to take their battle over their satellite offices to the Federal Court, because an affidavit from a university professor that argues in favour of their position was accepted as evidence by the court. If I may be so bold, championing this as a hopeful sign is jumping the gun. Sure, they haven’t had their case summarily dismissed just yet, but that’s hardly a good sign. It could be that the judge wants to hear more arguments before writing his or her reasons as to why this case should never be brought before the courts because of parliamentary privilege, and while there is some academic opinion out there that this doesn’t qualify, I have a hard time seeing why not. It is a fundamental tenet of our democratic system that parliament be self-governing, which means that it does not submit itself to an external body for oversight, and that the courts do not interfere with Parliament and its operations, just as Parliament does not interfere with the courts as they do their job. The mechanism by which the House of Commons governs its affairs is the Board of Internal Economy. They may choose at some future point to come up with a new internal mechanism, but for the time being, that’s it. Normally it operates by consensus, but in this case, the NDP feel that they are being treated unfairly because the other parties at the table insisted that they broke the rules, and to justify their refusal to play by those rules, the NDP have cried “partisan” and “kangaroo court” rather than admit that they were in the wrong when they used parliamentary resources to open up those satellite offices (the very nature of which are dubious to begin with, because they are an extension of the centralization of power and communications within the leader’s office, which is problematic for the rights of individual MPs). By turning to the courts, the NDP are repudiating the supremacy of parliament in determining its own affairs, and that’s a problem. But then again, they are consistent in this repudiation, from demanding that the Board of Internal Economy be dismantled and replaced by a new bureaucracy to oversee MPs activities and expenses, and that senators be placed under some other external authority (in advance of abolition, of course). The problem with trying to replace parliamentary self-governance with a technocratic bureaucracy is that it undermines the fundamental nature of our democratic system. If we can’t expect the people we elect to be able to manage their own affairs, then why are we bothering to elect them in the first place? We might as well just hand power back to the Queen, tell her that the past 170-odd years of Responsible Government didn’t really work out, but thank you very much, and be done with it. Asking the courts to interfere with Parliament’s self-governing ability is a similar admission, rather than taking responsibility for their actions. It’s petulant and does long-term damage to our very democratic system. I quite look forward to a sound denunciation of their position by the Federal Court.

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Roundup: An exit and a streamlining

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In case you hadn’t heard, there are two national political policy conventions happening this weekend, both at the same time, so Kady O’Malley came up with a viewer’s guide to both events. Last night we heard from Stephen Harper in a pretty canned speech that was mostly the same talking points that were in his retrospective video, and he wants the party to look forward. The rest of the Conservative convention is to be dedicated to reinvigorating the party as opposed to giving it a complete overhaul, so say its attendees, but there is a push to get a better organization in place to engage youth in the country – something the party has not been good at doing, officially eschewing a youth wing – and the “draft Rona Ambrose” movement continues to try to get enough support to modify the party’s constitution to allow her to run (never mind that she’s stated repeatedly that she’s not interested in the job).

As for the Liberals, it’s not just a victory lap for them as they went from third place and from talks of their time being over and needing to merge with the NDP to forming a majority government. No, they’ve got a very serious debate on their hands as it relates to whether they adopt a new “streamlined” constitution or now, and by “streamlined,” it means more than just the actual streamlining of having 18 different constitutions, but it centralizes all of the power into the leader’s office and eliminates pretty much every accountability mechanism that exists in the party for the sake of becoming a party of Big Data. So while some streamlining is no doubt necessary, I’m not sure that this is the way that the party should be run. There is also a movement to have an emergency resolution debated to pressure the government into amending C-14 to make it more Carter decision compliant, but it appears that the party has quashed it.

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Roundup: The Senate should strangle Chong’s bill

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There has been a sudden flurry of concern regarding the state of Michael Chong’s Reform Act, currently in the Senate, because the bill is likely to die there. In fact, if there were any sense in the world, it would, but not before the pundit class starts wailing and gnashing their teeth about how terrible it is that the unelected Senate would defeat a wildly popular bill from the Commons. Of course, that’s immediately where my head hits the desk, because that’s exactly why we have the Senate we do – because sometimes MPs overwhelmingly vote in dumb things, and cooler heads in the Senate can talk them down and defeat them without fear of electoral repercussion. You know, sober second thought, the raison d’etre of the Upper Chamber. And let’s face it – the Reform Act is a spectacularly terrible bill that will undermine Responsible Government and our system of Westminster-style democracy pretty much permanently. And if you think the gong show that just happened with the leadership review in Manitoba was an exception, well, Chong’s bill would see to it that those become somewhat more the norm across the country. The bill will do nothing to “empower” MPs. It will do the opposite by disincentivising them from rebelling against their leaders, as has successfully overturned bad leaders in many instances (most recently Alison Redford comes to mind). What will empower MPs is for them to actually stiffen their spines and do their jobs, because they have all the power that they need already – a lesson that Senator Fraser reiterated in her speech against Chong’s bill. But contrary to Andrew Coyne’s assertion, the Conservative leadership in the Senate has been inclined to pass the bill, but there are a number of Conservative senators who have wised up to the fact that the bill is terrible and they would do well to kill it in one way or another. Other senators are keenly aware that even MPs who voted for the bill know it’s terrible but didn’t think they could be seen to vote against it, so they sent it to the Senate, where it could be killed there, and they could use it as political cover (and denounce those terrible, awfully, unelected and unaccountable senators for killing a bill that passed the Commons even though MPs knew it was terrible). The “pass it off to the other chamber” game is not a new phenomenon (second only to “let’s pass it off to the Supreme Court”), but it’s another sign of how spineless MPs have become. Not that Chong’s bill would do anything about that spinelessness, ironically. Instead, it looks like it will be up to the Senate to save MPs from themselves yet again, and MPs won’t learn their lessons about taking their responsibilities seriously.

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Roundup: Two rulings and a report for the Mounties

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The RCMP were in the centre of the spotlight yesterday, with two Supreme Court judgements and a fact-finding report on the Moncton shootings all having been released. Regarding the former, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the ban on RCMP from collectively bargaining was unconstitutional, which opens the door for them to form a recognised police association (though they seem to be shying away from a full-blown union). This ruling has further reaching consequences as it also resolved some of the problems in the existing jurisprudence around freedom of association, which has been in a fairly bad state for the past four years or so since a previous decision introduced a great deal of confusion into the law. The second decision related to a challenge of the government’s wage rollbacks imposed on the Force in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis, but the RCMP lost that challenge because of the fairly narrow way in which it was constructed and argued. As for the Moncton report, much of it focuses on the lack of training and slow roll-out of new carbines, confusion among communications and problems related to body armour, many of which are problems that date back to the Mayerthorpe massacre of four Mounties. Where these two stories intersect, beyond the RCMP issue itself, is that police association members are saying that they could have addressed some of these problems and had timelines established as part of a collective bargaining process, which of course they don’t have.

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Roundup: A new posting for Kevin Vickers

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House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers has been appointed Canada’s new ambassador to Ireland, which seems like a fitting reward for the his heroic actions on October 22nd. Well, once you get past the questions about his diplomatic credentials (not that Ireland is likely to be a posting with actual diplomatic challenges). It also does leave one wondering about what will happen with the ongoing review of security on Parliament Hill in the wake of the shooting, since Vickers will no longer be around to answer questions. His deputy, Pat McDonell, will be assuming his duties for the time being, but if he doesn’t get the job full-time once Vickers is officially gone, it could mean that we might get a female Sergeant-at-Arms, as one of the other deputies who often sits in the chair is a woman. Kady O’Malley rounds up some of the reaction to the news.

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Roundup: Returning to normal, cautiously

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Things are slowly returning to normal here in the Nation’s Capital. After an impromptu ceremony with Harper and the Chief of Defence Staff at the War Memorial, ceremonial guards again keep vigil over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And later in the evening, the Hill once again opened to the public, with tours to resume on Monday. The police presence remains higher, but we are going about our business without hysteria. Corporal Cirillo’s body returned to Hamilton by way of the Highway of Heroes, where Canadians turned out in droves to line the overpasses to pay their respects as the convoy passed. Later in the evening, the RedBlacks game in Ottawa featured Harper and General Lawson in a ceremony to honour the two fallen soldiers this week. (And true to form, the RedBlacks lost again).

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