Tag Archives: Reform Act

Roundup: The return of the Reform Act

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Despite hopes that we might be rid of this nonsense, Michael Chong is back with a vengeance, plugging for parties to implement the Reform Act when their caucuses meet in the coming weeks, and hey, he’s not done spouting a bunch of complete bollocks about the new legislation! A reminder: The Reform Act is de facto useless, and de jure harmful to our system of government. I’ve outlined it all before here, here and here, so that soil is well tilled, but suffice to say, it’s not going to empower MPs like he says as MPs already have that power but simply don’t exercise it. It will, in fact, do the opposite. But then there’s some troubling statements he made on Power & Politics last night regarding his idea of the role of the Senate when it comes to leadership votes. Not only did his bill define the caucus as MPs only, but he stated that senators have no role in the selection of an interim leader because it was about (in this case) choosing the “leader of the opposition” which had nothing to do with the Senate, since MPs didn’t choose their leader. Nope – all wrong. It’s about choosing the interim party leader, not just leader in the Commons, and senators are just as much part of the party as MPs are. That makes a difference, particularly if the interim leader is going to be making organisational changes within the party structure which senators are every bit as entitled to have a say in as MPs. Also, because that leader will be able to choose who the Senate leader is going to be (well, for the Conservatives anyway – mileage may vary for future Liberal interim leadership votes), they have a vested interest in who will be chosen. Chong insisting otherwise is being disingenuous. So why is he making the big pitch – other than for the sake of his legislative legacy? Because I’m pretty sure that he’s building himself up for a permanent leadership bid as the “great reformer.” It’s too bad that his reforms are a sham that only serves to entrench what problems have grown in our system. But it’s all about looking like you’re changing things, right? It’s cynical, and sadly, a great many people (my journalistic colleagues included) will lap it right up.

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Roundup: No, Chong’s bill won’t give us Australian leadership spills

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News of the leadership spill in Australia, ousting Tony Abbott as prime minister and ending the greatest political bromance of the Commonwealth countries (Harper and Abbott were quite the mutual admiration society), we were suddenly inundated with Twitter musings about whether that could happen in Canada, thanks to Michael Chong’s Reform Act which passed this summer. While Kady O’Malley offers the “in theory” answer, the in practice answer is that no, it couldn’t happen here, because Canada has a terrible system of leadership selection that purports to “democratise” the system with grassroots involvement, but instead created an unaccountable and presidentialised system of an overly powerful leader that has little fear of their caucus turning on them, because caucus didn’t select them. When it comes to removal, selection matters. A lot. Chong’s bill, perversely, makes an Australian situation less likely by raising the bar for leadership challenges to happen in the first place, and would instead give us situations like what happened in Manitoba where a sitting leader was challenged, and when it went to a leadership process where he still participated and won based on the grassroots support when his caucus was no longer behind him, well, it’s ugly and it’s down right unparliamentary given that a leader needs to have the confidence of his or her caucus, and when they don’t but stay in based on grassroots votes, the system breaks down. Paul Wells cautions that reforming a system usually replaces real or perceive problems with different problems, while Andrew Coyne points out that being able to dump a bad leader quickly is the lesser evil of being stuck with them.

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Roundup: No, they’re not new powers

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I’ll admit that there has been some terribly naïve punditry about Michael Chong’s Reform Act, and a lot of touchy-feely optimism about the fuzzy notion of “reform,” but perhaps one of the most gallingly maladroit to date has come from Campbell Clark, who wonders if MPs will actually get the will to confront party leaders with their “new powers.” Yes, that was the sound of me sighing deeply. “New powers.” For those of you keeping score, Chong’s bill did not give MPs any new powers. MPs had all the power in the world thanks to the way our system of government is designed – elected as an individual MP under the first-past-the-post system, they are empowered to give or withdraw confidence, whether it is to their party leaders, or to the government of the day in the Commons. That’s an incredible amount of power because confidence is how our system runs. The problem is that they stopped empowering themselves to exercise their power, deferring first to leaders who were no longer accountable to them after we broke our leadership selection system to make it “more democratic” by taking away that power from MPs and giving it to the party membership (a convention which Chong’s bill now cements into law), and later to leaders who gained the power to sign off on their nomination forms (a measure designed to prevent spoofing on ballots and hijacked nomination races). Sure, MPs still had power and they could exercise it – but it generally meant that enough of them had to defy the leader all at once to ensure that the spectre of group punishment didn’t draw further questions, and few MPs had the intestinal fortitude to risk their necks. They still, however, had that power. For Chong to claim that his bill grants “new” powers is bogus. As I’ve stated before, it actually takes power away because it did not actually do away with the nomination sign-off power in a meaningful way, and it raised the bar by which MPs can openly challenge a leader so it can no longer be a small group who has the gonads to go forward, but will now see the media demanding the 20 percent headcount. So will MPs have the will to use these “new” powers? Probably not, because the bar has been set higher. But in the meantime, we’ll have the pundit class praising Chong for his efforts and his “courage,” rewarding him for the campaign of bullying and attempting to disenfranchise an entire body of parliament along the way.

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Roundup: The Reform Act makes everything worse

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On a vote of 38 to 14, with four abstentions, Michael Chong’s Reform Act passed third reading in the Senate last night, despite a couple of late attempts at amendments that were designed to essentially kill the bill. MPs who bullied senators into passing the bill – Chong included, never mind that he wants them to kill a different bill he doesn’t agree with – were jubilant over social media, but they all seem oblivious to the fact that they’ve just undermined their own stated goals in passing this bill. I’ve written on the subject numerous times – here, here, here, here and here, and long story short is that it won’t actually remove the power of the leader to veto nominations because it doesn’t stop the leader from just giving his chief-of-staff that power, and instead of giving caucus the power to remove a problematic leader, it insulates that leader by creating a high enough bar that any MP who grows enough of a spine to go public will face a media that demands the names of the twenty percent of other rebellious MPs, and any opposition will crumble. Oh, and our current broken system of unaccountable presidentialised leadership selections are now being codified into legislation because we really want to make sure that we really break our system of Westminster democracy well and truly while patting ourselves on the back for “modest reforms.” It’s not reform, and I can guarantee that we will live to regret it, like we have every other “reform” attempt that has inevitably made our system worse off. Congratulations, 41st Parliament – you’ve done an ace job in making things worse. Slow clap.

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Roundup: Half-assing discussions on the Senate

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With all of the recent attention on the Senate lately, there has been no shortage of columns and think-pieces about the institution, calls for its abolition, and the conflation of a host of issues under the banner of “scandal” writ large, all senators painted with the brush of criminality, all of the expense issues flagged by the Auditor General treated as outright graft, and now with the accusations against Senator Don Meredith of sexual impropriety with a teenager, the institution itself seems to bear the blame. Never mind that elected officials are often caught misspending or engaging in inappropriate behaviour (there is a reason why the Commons Clerk has a conversation with the female pages at the beginning of every session). Add to the pile is the weekend longread in the Ottawa Citizen about what to do with the problem of the Senate. And for as much as it was a noble effort, it fell apart rather quickly on a number of fronts. For one, for a piece of its length, it relied on astonishingly few sources – one retiring Conservative senator who is engaged in a campaign of self-serving legacy-building, one who has already retired, the same political scientist that every reporter goes to for a quote, and one more lesser-known political scientist to push back against a few of the claims. That’s not a lot for a fairly complex issue. Much of the article is taken up by the fixation on a referendum on Senate abolition, be it from Hugh Segal’s outright bizarre notion that it could somehow give the institution legitimacy if it were rejected, to the usual nonsense that it will somehow spur premiers to action. Completely absent from the self-awareness of any of these arguments is the fundamental concept that one of the Senate’s very primary purposes was to protect the interests of minority provinces – to say that referendum result can somehow wipe away those very real interests is a complete betrayal of the principles of a liberal democracy which is supposed to mediate against the harms of mob rule. The piece also makes boneheaded statements like the composition of the Senate over-representing smaller provinces – which was the whole point, to have a system of regional representation that was not bound to representation-by-population. The Senate’s model of equal regions was designed to counter the rep-by-pop of the Commons, and the inability for people to grasp this simple fact is gob smacking. Nowhere in any discussion of reform are the reasons the Senate was structured the way it was – to provide institutional independence against the reprisals of a government they push back against. Accusations of ineffectiveness are mired in the recent past as opposed to a broader look at times when the Senate has less deferential, nor does it look at reasons why it’s in a deferential state right now (hint: the manner in which the current Prime Minister made his selections). And the issue of the lack of seriousness by which successive prime ministers have taken their appointment powers is not explored at all, when it is probably the most important part of the discussion about what to do about the Senate. If we’re going to have a discussion about the Senate, then let’s be serious about it. Half-assed attempts like this don’t help the conversation.

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Roundup: The AG’s unchecked power

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As we continue to sort through the aftermath of the Senate audit, one of the more distasteful things that I’ve come across is this sneering narrative that senators are insufficiently grateful to the Auditor General for the work. I’m not sure why they should be, considering that in many of the responses posted by those who are sending their questioned expenses to arbitration is that the auditors in question ignored their evidence or arguments and made value judgements with no real understanding of parliamentary business. Add to that the leaks to the media and their being painted with the brush of criminality, it’s no wonder that they don’t feel like showering the praise. More disconcertingly, however, is the narrative that the Auditor General can do no wrong. We’ve heard this not only from the pundit class, but also the NDP in their sanctimonious mischaracterizations of the results of the audit results, and the general excuses that “who are the public going to believe – the auditors or the senators?” In other words, rather than owing any deference to our parliamentarians, as was once the case, we now give it to an unelected and unaccountable officer of parliament, who wields an increasing amount of political influence whether he seeks it or not. This should be disconcerting to people, because nobody is infallible, and yet we treat the AG as though he were. His report on the Senate audit says point blank that these are not just cold hard facts – they had to exercise their professional judgement, and that is putting them at odds with some of those senators. That it doesn’t seem to enter into the conceptions of people that he could be wrong, that his professional judgement may have been on the wrong track when it comes to what could constitute parliamentary business for a senator – whose role in the community is different from that of an MP – is a problem. This much unchecked and unquestioned power is a fairly dangerous political power, and we should be asking more questions. As it stands, We The Media are the only ones who can hold the AG in check, and we shouldn’t give him a free pass, no matter how much the office has attained folk hero status. (Incidentally, one former AG says the price tag for auditing MPs would be so high as to be a waste of money, so there you go).

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Roundup: Disputing the AG’s claims

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The Senate feeding frenzy continues, complete with torqued headlines and inordinate amounts of time being given to the concern trolls in the NDP (who refuse to answer questions on whether they plan to campaign on opening the constitution if they truly believe in abolition). And why not? The Senate is an easy punching bag. More details continue to leak out, despite the fact that the full audit won’t be made public until Tuesday afternoon, which really makes one question who is doing the leaking and what their endgame is. The AG has hinted that it’s not his office doing the leaking, but if I were him, I’d be steaming mad about these leaks which are casting a pall over the report itself, and fuelling this breathless and hysterical coverage that remains to date largely devoid of a great many facts. The concern trolling over the two leaders and the Speaker has been particularly odious, and it’s hard to take these cries of apparent conflict of interest seriously when you look at the facts regarding their actual involvement and what they knew about their spending claims – just because they got requests for additional information, it didn’t mean that they knew they would be in the final report, and none of the three are being accused of any particular criminality. It was also made known that the Prime Minister wouldn’t have known that there were a couple of questioned expenses for Senator Housakos when he was appointed Speaker, but hey, PMO-conspiracy theorists won’t believe it regardless. While Senator Boisvenu stepped down from the Conservative caucus for the investigation, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny put out a release saying his response in the audit will speak for itself. Former Senator Gerry St. Germain disputes that he’s done anything wrong, as did Former Senator Don Oliver, and well, pretty much every one of the nine that were flagged for being egregious. It also bears mentioning that the audit itself cost over $21 million, and found less than a million in questionable spending, and that number is likely to drop dramatically once the arbitration process gets underway and a number of these cases are found to have been value judgements on the part of auditors (and yes, this is an actual problem with the way this was conducted). Some MPs and Senators think that MPs should have their own books looked over, and wouldn’t you know it, there are a whole lot of MPs who resist that notion – particularly the ones who have been so vocal about the Senate allegations. Meanwhile, the lawyers for suspended senators Wallin, Brazeau and Duffy are whinging that it’s not fair that their clients didn’t have access to this arbitration process, but there was a process at the time that they could have availed themselves to. There have been a lot of problems with procedural fairness with the way their cases were handled, and political expediency was the order of the day coming from the government’s side, but that doesn’t actually excuse any of the potential wrongdoing that they are alleged to have done, most of which far exceeds what most of the senators apparently named in the report did.

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Roundup: An arbiter and a process in place

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The Auditor General was making the media rounds yesterday, largely combating the cheap outrage journalism about the supposed spending issues of his office (which wasn’t a story but hey), and confirmed that about 30 senators would be facing some kind of repayment, fewer than 10 serious enough to merit being forwarded to the RCMP – but of course, ten became the headline number when he said it would be fewer, and the number of five to eight has been suggested by other media outlets, which seems more in line with what he claims. The total number of senators examined was 117 current and former, and it certainly sounds like the majority of cases will be fairly minor in terms of repayments. The Senate announced that they are retaining former Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie as the independent arbiter on expenses, so that they have a process by which to dispute the AG’s findings if they so choose, and that may be necessary considering the complaints emerging about the lack of knowledge on the part of auditors as to parliamentary functions. This raises the question of fairness – is it fair that these senators will have a process in place, whereas Senators Duffy, Brazeau and Wallin did not, and were suspended without any kind of due process? The answer of course is that no, it’s probably not fair, but this was a fairly consuming crisis at the time, and they were sacrificed on the altar of expediency. Politics is messy business, particularly when you were high-profile appointments and had become a political liability. I’m not sure that it should be reason to forgo having a process going forward, but if all three are found guilty on the charges laid by the RCMP, then will it really matter in the end?

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Roundup: A court challenge goes ahead

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It’s a court challenge that is probably understated in its importance and its longer-term implications, but the attempt to challenge Stephen Harper’s refusal to appoint new senators got a boost as the Federal Court rejected the government’s attempt to have it struck down before being heard. That means that the challenge can go ahead, and we’ll get a ruling from the Federal Court (which may possibly even make its way up to the Supreme Court) as to the constitutional requirement that a Prime Minister has to advise the Governor General on Senate appointments. The common retort about the obligation is that the constitution doesn’t specify when appointments need to be made – simply “from time to time,” but the plain reading of that text is that because there are no fixed dates as to when seats become vacant, there can be no fixed times as to when they are to be filled. That vacancies are allowed to pile up also goes against the representative nature of the Senate – those regions are entitled to their representation, and it should be as unconscionable that those seats are left vacant as it would be if they were seats in the Commons. This argument is being made in the challenge, “When shall a vacancy be filled? When it happens, not at the pleasure of the Prime Minister.” While the courts may make a declaration as to the constitutionality, it is unlikely they will be able to make a declaratory order that it be enforced, however, because it is in relation to a constitutional convention as opposed to a statute, but it still matters. Why this is important is not only for the obligation that Harper has made his decision not to appoint any more senators known (at least not in the current political climate), the NDP have also declared that they wouldn’t make any appointments either were they ever to form government, but good luck getting the unanimous consent of the provinces to make that constitutional amendment. They too would be bound by a positive declaration by the courts – that they are obligated to make the appointments. That Harper and Mulcair are on the same side of an issue, even if it’s for different reasons, is a curious state of affairs, and it’s very telling that the government tried to get it thrown out of court.

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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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