Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Roundup: Talking over criticism

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We saw more testimony on C-51 yesterday, pretty much all of it scathing in one way or another – not that the Conservatives on the committee were really open to hearing such criticism, and went so far as to mischaracterise some of the comments on the evening political shows, and talking over those witnesses while in committee to attempt to make their points for them. One of the witnesses yesterday was AFN national chief Perry Bellegarde, who wants the bill withdrawn for not having consulted with First Nations, because he sees it as an assault on their rights, saying that they have been labelled as terrorists for standing up for their rights and lands. (I can’t recall this government ever having done that, for the record, and I think his argument is a bit of a stretch, but maybe that’s just me). A former head of SIRC – and former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister at that – called the bill a constitutional mess, which is a pretty good indication that the criticism on the bill is coming from all sides – not just the environmentalists and civil libertarians. The Conservatives, meanwhile, have blocked the Privacy Commissioner from appearing at committee, but they insist that he was “consulted” on the bill. The problem there is that he didn’t see the bill before it was tabled, which is really tough to call it consultation since he couldn’t see the language of what he was supposed to be consulted on. John Geddes profiles the two law professors who have taken the lead in pointing out the many flaws in the bill, who also appeared yesterday.

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Roundup: Friendly fire death

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With news of a death by friendly fire in Iraq, one can pretty much imagine how this is going to become the fodder of QP over the coming days – much of it likely to be condemnation about a mission where these special operations forces were never supposed to be near the front lines in the first place, and a government that will be urging patience for the outcome of the investigations into just what happened that night when our troops came under fire. To add insult, the Kurdish forces took to their local media to blame the Canadians for the incident, but there are already dissenting reports, saying that their version doesn’t fit with the facts on the ground, including the maxim that “special forces don’t freelance” – hence why the government will be urging calm until an investigation happens. Just don’t hold your breath when it comes to requests not to politicise this death, because we’ve already crossed that line.

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Roundup: Loans and borrowing without oversight

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Government programmes that allow their Crown Corporations to lend money are growing without any parliamentary oversight, and certainly no statutory review once these programmes have been in place, whether it’s student loans or business development loans. Now, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is sounding the alarm, because it’s one more way in which parliamentarians have lost control over the public purse and have little ability to hold the government to account for any of these loans that they are giving out. Add to the fact that they have already lost the ability to hold the government o account for any borrowing that the government does – they took that bit of oversight away a couple of years ago as part of an omnibus budget bill, despite it being a fundamental part of our Westminster democratic traditions, and now any borrowing simply requires a nod from cabinet – hardly an effective check on government’s financial decisions. Further add to that the fact that the government has been putting out budgets with no numbers in it, and Estimates not attached to any budget so that there is no comparison or examination of what’s in it in a fiscal perspective, and it all adds up to parliamentarians not doing their jobs, and being able to control the purse strings of the government of the day, making Parliament a shadow version of itself. This should alarm everybody in this country because this is the parliament that you’ve elected not doing their jobs.

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Roundup: Foolishly demanding Supreme Court intervention

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In an attempt to continue to stall having to repay their satellite office expenses, the NDP have taken the incredulous move of demanding that the government refer the matter to the Supreme Court, so that they can decide whether the matter is even justiciable before the NDP’s challenge at the Federal Court goes ahead. Oh, and they’re not going to pay a cent back until they have final say from the courts, and given the pace at which these things happen, it sounds an awful lot like they’re trying to keep putting this off until we’re into the writ period, if not later. More to the point, this is completely crazy and irresponsible because it’s a self-inflected blow to parliamentary sovereignty. Parliament decides its own rules because it’s the body that decides upon the creation of laws in this country, and it has privileges to ensure that it can do so without interference from either the Crown or its agents. What’s worse is how the NDP worded their press release – that they want the Supreme Court “to intervene,” amidst their whinging that this is because the Conservatives and Liberals re being mean to them for partisan reasons – never mind that it was the Clerk who discovered that they broke the rules. The fact that they are wording this in such a way makes it sound like they want the Supreme Court to be the babysitters of Parliament – which is not their job – and furthermore sounds about one step away from them calling on the Queen to intervene for them because they’re not getting their way. It’s political desperation, and it’s a terrible road to start travelling down, to voluntarily start stripping parliament of its privileges because they refuse to own up to their own poor judgement.

https://twitter.com/j_scott_/status/571449661007003649

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Roundup: Eight whole meetings

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With the C-51 now before the Commons public safety committee, various kinds of shenanigans were played there, the NDP essentially launching a filibuster throughout the day in order to get more time to hear from witnesses, and they did get more time – about eight days, instead of three. They had proposed some 25 hearings, which included over a constituency week so that they could still meet the same deadline the government proposed, but they didn’t bite. It was also suggested that this may have been the government’s plan the whole time – give them a few more days and they’ll seem reasonable. Perhaps, but that didn’t seem to be the case if you listened to the Conservatives on the committee, who seemed to think that talk about rights was somehow an unreasonable thing. Online, people claiming to be from Anonymous are hoping an online campaign will force the government to back down on the bill, the way the government responded to backlash over Vic Toews’ lawful access bill, but I’m not sure they’ll have the same success, especially as the government is fairly confident that they can get the public to go along with the bill by holding the threat of terrorism over them – especially as new stories of people heading over to fight with ISIS become almost daily news at this point. The NDP tried to get in on the online campaign game and tried to get #StandWithRosane to trend – meaning their deputy critic Rosane Doré Lefebvre, leading the filibuster effort. Not surprisingly, it didn’t trend, for fairly obvious reasons, which makes one think that the NDP still hasn’t quite cracked the social media campaign that the election will supposedly be about. Perhaps we can call it a “hashtag fail,” as it were.

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QP: Engaging at all levels

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Tuesday in the Commons, and all of the leaders were present. Apparently Mondays don’t count. Thomas Mulcair led off asking about Mohamed Fahmy and demanded that the Prime Minister contact the Egyptian President directly. Stephen Harper responded by saying that they have raised it at all levels, including his own, and that they would continue to press the case. Mulcair said that it wasn’t a clear answer, and asked it again. Harper repeated the substance of his answer, and and dead his disappointment in the lack of progress. Mulcair moved onto C-51, to which Harper dismissed the criticisms as “ridiculous.” Mulcair then asked if Harper felt that SIRC was adequate oversight when even SIRC’s members indicated otherwise. Harper expressed dismay that Mulcair compared Canada’s human rights record to Egypt’s, and read a passage about judicial authorization — nothing to do with the question. Mulcair then changed topics to ask about a backbencher’s musing about using the Notwithstanding Clause on the doctor-assisted dying issue. Harper said he respects the decision of the courts, and was listening to Canadians. Justin Trudeau was up for the Liberals, and wondered if they would support their supply day motion on creating a special committee to study the issue. Harper said that it was a delicate issue and threw it to the Commons justice committee to study it if they wish. Trudeau noted the time crunch, to which Harper repeated that it was a non-partisan issue and repeated his previous answer. Trudeau noted that Harper hadn’t actually answered on the Notwithstanding Clause question, and asked again — not that he got a different answer.

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Roundup: A few notes on the Gallery feud

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I didn’t really want to wade into this, but I think it bears saying that much of this dispute between Press Gallery members over proposed changes to the constitution is nonsense. There was apparently an incident of harassment against another gallery member, and since it’s not being handled by an employer, it means it was likely allegedly done by a freelancer. Certain paranoid individuals with a grudge against the gallery executive spent the weekend stoking fears that these changes would allow government staffers and MPs to lodge baseless “harassment” complaints against journalists in order to silence or intimidate them – despite the fact that such a supposition would mean that the Gallery’s Board of Directors would be complicit in such actions of silence or intimidation, which defies credulity. Add to all of that, concern trolls over the Twitter Machine fuelled the flames into a full-blown fight, and some of those responsible for fanning the flames are marginal members of the Gallery at best, while members of the general public who’ve decided to weigh in with conspiracy theories that the PMO is trying to manipulate us are just turning this into a gong show. Everyone needs to calm down and trust that the Gallery Directors aren’t out to screw with them, and the concern trolls and Harper haters should probably mind their own business and let the members of the Gallery have their own discussions in a calm and rational manner. I’m sure the AGM on Friday will be interesting, but not if everyone comes into it with it all blown out of proportion in their own minds.

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Roundup: Chris Alexander’s niqab nonsense

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In a mind-boggling moment of specious logic and dog-whistle politics as its worst, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander asserted that people who defend women wearing the niqab are inherently defending violence against women. No, seriously. I’m not even sure where to begin, from the patriarchal assertions that deny women agency to make their own choices about what they wear, to the completely false moral equivalence between the two, all while trying to score political points on the xenophobic attitudes of a portion of the population that feels uncomfortable by the Other that confronts them (or as in the case of the vast majority of the country, something that doesn’t actually confront them but they’ve seen on television and are weirded out by). More than anything, it’s exceedingly odd that this is a government that likes to get up on any high horse it finds and trumpets the fact that it champions freedom of religion around the globe. Look, we even created a special ambassador for the post, and pretty much overturned the doctrine that there shouldn’t be a hierarchy of rights, and yet here we are privileging religion above other rights in our foreign policy. And yet, the moment these women choose to demonstrate their religious observance by wearing the niqab, this government freaks out and says no, that’s terribly, you can’t do it at these times and places. And yes, I know that the niqab is really more of a cultural observance than a religious one, but many of these women believe it to be religious, so unless we want to go full colonial on them, perhaps the government – and Alexander in particular – needs to rethink the logic of their position before they make any more boneheaded pronouncements.

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Roundup: The problem with SIRC

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Of the many hats that Bob Rae has worn over his long and storied careers in Canadian politics, one of them was as a member of the Security and Intelligence Review Committee for a period of five years. Remember, this is the body that the government claims is providing oversight to CSIS, and that they’re “robust,” “doing a good job,” and “are the envy of the world.” No, seriously – they have said all of those things. Rae, meanwhile, notes that SIRC has limited resources for the size of the job they have, but more than that, they haven’t been paid attention to by the government itself. In other words, no matter what their reports say, and how scathing they are, the government’s response is pretty much to pat them on the head, say thanks, and ignore them. Issues like the limited mandate and compartmentalisation of what they’re supposed to be reviewing makes their jobs almost impossible to get a proper picture. The Privacy Commissioner has pointed out that the silos make their own job difficult to do because they can’t see what’s going on either. And then there are security agencies like CBSA – which gained a lost of powers post-9/11 – who have no independent oversight at all. But hey, any oversight is just “needless red tape” – also a phrase this government has used – and would somehow detract from trying to fight terrorists. All of this just adds to the fact that giving CSIS new powers without any additional oversight sounds like a more alarming proposition all the time.

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Roundup: Supreme Court okays assisted dying

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In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 that struck down laws around doctor-assisted dying in this country, so long as the person is a competent adult with a condition that they have no hope of recovering from, be it terminal or an acute disability. As well, it’s worth noting that while Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the minority in the 1993 Sue Rodriguez case, she led a unanimous court this time. The ruling is welcomed by those who live with pain and who know that it will only get worse, as well as by Conservative MP Stephen Fletcher, who has been fighting for these changes in parliament. The head of the Canadian Medical Association wants there to be a process to set the rules around this new right. Emmett Macfarlane parses the decision and shows how it paves the way for governments, which have been too politically paralysed to deal with these kinds of issues. Carissima Mathen says the ruling not only shows the ways in which laws evolve, but that it’s a call to action for governments – and explains the ruling on Power Play. Jonathan Kay writes about the perversity of the current law, where the assisted suicide that was legal was to starve oneself in a cruel manner. Andrew Coyne fears this is a first step to some kind of death-on-demand system.

https://twitter.com/heathermallick/status/563782441681584131

https://twitter.com/kylekirkup/status/563720759080910848

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