Tag Archives: Shared Services

Roundup: Say no to a Charter Rights Officer

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The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is leading a push for the creation of an independent Charter Rights Officer for Parliament, and that sound you hear is my head hitting my desk over and over again. Because no. We don’t need yet another officer of parliament. We really, really don’t.

What we need is for MPs – particularly the opposition – to stand up and actually do their jobs, rather than fobbing off their homework onto yet another officer, who is accountable to nobody, whose reports they can then wield like some kind of a cudgel while not actually fulfilling their own responsibilities as parliamentarians (which, I will remind you once again, is to hold the government to account). The proliferation of officers of parliament has so diminished the capacity of the opposition to do their gods damned jobs in this country that it’s embarrassing, and since the inception of the Parliamentary Budget Office, it’s only become so much more egregious because now they can ignore the Estimates cycle entirely (despite controlling the public purse being the inherent definition of what MPs are supposed to do, and how they hold governments to account).

Oh, but it’s hard! Oh, but why not cede this to subject matter experts like lawyers and judges? Oh, why don’t we just start pre-referring all bills to the Supreme Court of Canada while we’re at it and turn the dialogue between the Court and Parliament into a game of “Mother May I?” Honestly, would it kill MPs to actually debate policy, which Charter compliance is a big part of? Parliament has responsibilities to fulfil. Why don’t we actually make them do their jobs rather than finding yet another excuse for them to avoid doing it?

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Roundup: Slight mandate confusion

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The effort to turn the delay in André Pratte’s formal Senate appointment while he finalizes the purchase of property in the right Quebec senatorial district into some kind of controversy continues to be weak sauce, but it did expose a bit of a schism between what the advisory board believes their job to be – finding names to be recommended, leaving the PMO to do the final vetting – and the PMO’s communication around their expectations – that the board should only recommend qualified persons (which, let’s be honest, is a little bit of buck-passing). I’ve seen what purports to be the application form, and it did have the seven vacant districts listed, but that doesn’t mean that Pratte filled that form out as a self-applicant, but may have been approached, which could be why the issue of property was not entirely sorted before he was recommended. Regardless, it remains a bit of a damp squib in terms of a controversy or conspiracy, as Conservative MP Scott Reid would have us believe. Does this mean that there will likely be more vetting the next time around? Probably. Is this a fatal blow to the process? Hardly. Growing pains at the very least, which is why they had the interim process that generated these seven names first, so that they could work the bugs out of the system. That said, I will repeat Emmett Macfarlane’s note that the bigger problem with this process is people applying. That way is almost certainly the way that madness lies, as every egomaniac and self-professed “top minds” in their field will apply (and I know of at least one person who is wholly unqualified but believes himself to be who is trying to get support for a self-nominated Senate application). This should be a process where people are identified and nominated by others in recognition for a lifetime of good work, not a means of ego-stroking and self-congratulation without having to go through the rabble of the electoral process. It defeats the whole point of the Senate as being a place where people who would not otherwise seek office can be given an opportunity to contribute. If you are seeking a Senate appointment, your motives should be immediately considered suspect, and should almost certainly be disqualifying. After all, did we learn nothing from Mike Duffy’s decades-long campaign to get himself appointed? Let’s not do that again.

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