Tag Archives: Undermining Parliamentary Democracy

Roundup: Perverting the Westminster system

Posted on by

Amidst the various detritus floating out there of post-Brexit thinkpieces, one could blink and miss a pair of posts the Andrew Potter made yesterday, but let me state that it would be a mistake to do so. The first post was a response to another trolling post from someone else who stated that a Brexit vote would never have happened in the American system because of all of its various checks and balances. Potter, however, doesn’t rise to the bait in quite the way you would think, and instead looks at the ways in which Responsible Government in the UK has gone wrong of late, which led to this situation. Things like the referendum itself not being a usual parliamentary instrument, or the fixed-parliaments legislation, and the ways in which party leadership contests have done away with the usual accountability mechanisms on the leaders that are being elected rather than selected. In other words, it’s the perversions of the Westminster system that have caused the problems at hand, not the system itself that is to blame as the original trolling post would otherwise indicate. And for those of you who’ve been following my writing for a while, this is a recurring theme with me too (which you’ll see expounded upon in my book when it’s released next year) – that it’s the constant attempts to tinker with the system that wind up being the problem because we’ve been forgetting how the system is actually supposed to operate. If we left the system alone and used it the way it’s intended, we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems creeping in, forcing people to demand yet more tinkering reforms.

The second post from Potter is a continuation from an aside in the first piece, but it’s worth a read nevertheless because it’s a quick look at ways in which the changes that America needs to its system go beyond simple electoral reform, but rather a change to a Westminster-style parliamentary system rather than its current morass that more resembles a pre-Responsible Government reflection of the “balanced constitution” model that the UK was experimenting with at the time. One imagines that it would mean turning their president into a more figurehead role than also having him or her be the head of government as well as head of state as the office is now (this is the part that Potter glosses over), but the rest of the points stand – that a confidence-based system instead of term limits would allow its heads of government to burn out in a third term rather than create independent power bases that are then used for dynastic purposes (witness both the Bush and Clinton dynasties), that problems with things like Supreme Court appointments would rectify themselves, and that it would force reforms to their party system that would largely prevent the kind of outsider demagogue problem that we saw in the current election cycle with Trump and Sanders. It’s certainly thought provoking, and a timely defence of our parliamentary institutions as they are supposed to function.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A vote for support

Posted on by

We have the motion on the Order Paper now for the debate and eventual vote on the newly refocused mission in Syria and Iraq, and to the relief of those of us who care about things like Crown Prerogative and the powers of the executive, it’s crafted simply in the language of supporting the mission. This is critical, because asking for authorisation is a giant can of worms that nobody really should want to even contemplate opening, but even with this language, it’s going to cause headaches going forward. To recap, asking for authorization is something that launders the prerogative and thus the government’s accountability. When something goes wrong, they can shrug and say “the House voted for the mission,” and to varying degrees, the Harper government did this, particularly with relationship to Afghanistan. These non-binding votes are a rather unseemly bit of political theatre that purports to put the question to MPs – because apparently they need to have buy-in when we send our men and women in uniform into danger, or some such nonsense – and it gives parties like the NDP a chance to thump their chests about peacekeeping and pandering to pacifistic notions (and does anyone seriously buy that nobody is trying to stop the flow of money, arms and fighters to ISIS without Canada butting to the front of the line to finger-wag at them?), and parties like the Conservatives a chance to rail that they were doing so much more when they were in charge (when they weren’t), or when they were in charge, to pat themselves on the back for everything they were doing (when really, it tended to be a bare minimum at best, or a symbolic contribution at worst). Of course, all of this could be done with a simple take-note debate without a vote, which is how it should be, because a vote implies authorisation, and that’s how the NDP have read each and every vote in the past, and they will loudly remind everyone in QP and elsewhere about it. Trudeau has been trying to keep expectations measured by saying that they recognise the role of the executive in making these decisions – but he went and proposed a vote anyway, muddling the role of MPs in this situations like these. That role, to remind you, is to hold the government to account, so if you’re going to have a vote on a military mission, then one might as well make it a confidence vote because foreign policy and control of the military is at the heart of the Crown’s powers. (These authorisation votes that aren’t confidence measures are playing out in the UK right now, which is making a mess of their own system, for the record). Trudeau should have known better than to continue this pattern of confusion and left it at a take-note debate, like it should be. A vote, whether it’s an actual authorisation or just a declaration of support, only serves to make the waters murky, which we need our governments to stop doing before they do lasting harm to our system of Responsible Government.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698151173568729088

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698151589626966016

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698151991277723648

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698152397277917184

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698153619657461760

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698154371541032961

Continue reading →

Roundup: Meddling in the committees

Posted on by

I mentioned this yesterday in passing, but I’m going to revisit it today, which is the way that the Liberals are handling the issue of parliamentary secretaries at committees. And yes, they have stuck by their promise not to put them on committees officially, and they have written into their rulebook on government accountability and transparency that these parliamentary secretaries won’t be able to vote on said committees either – but they’re still showing up to them, and that is a problem. We saw under the previous government what happened under the previous government, where the parliamentary secretaries were on the committee, and their designated PMO staffer – used to help them with their additional duties – basically ran the committees, telling them how to vote, what motions to put forward, etcetera. And thus, committees started behaving not like independent bodies designed to scrutinise bills or hold the government to account for its plans, but rather to act as branch plants of ministers’ offices. It was a terrible perversion of what our system is supposed to do. The Liberals, so keen to look like they’re not emulating the Harper government’s practices, are nevertheless de facto carrying them on. Just because the parliamentary secretary isn’t voting, they and their PMO staffer are still in the room, directing the government side, even if they happen to call it “advice” and “offering the resources of the Privy Council” and all of those happy, clappy words. And while on Procedure and House Affairs, David Christopherson shouts himself into an apoplectic frenzy over it, he really has little room to talk, considering how the centralisation of operations in the NDP in the previous parliament meant that they had their own staffers from the leaders’ offices directing their MPs, providing scripts for them in the committee, and the like. Seems to me that it’s not really helping MPs be independent or letting them do their work without interference either (but this is also what happens when you get a caucus full of accidental MPs who don’t know what they’re doing, and that lack of experience made it easier to condition them to behave as the leader’s office wanted for the duration of that parliament). With the number of newbie MPs on the Liberal benches, that temptation is certainly going to be there as well – that because they’re so new, they’re going to need a lot of guidance, and hey, who better to provide it than the parliamentary secretary? No. Just no. This kind of thing needs to stop, and the Liberals promised that they were going to be better than this. So far, that promise to be better is proving to be a bit of a shell game, optics that say openness and transparency and leaning away from centralisation, but the core of it remains. Time to keep the parliamentary secretaries from the committee room, unless they’re there to help the minister with testimony. Let’s restore our institutions to their proper functioning for a change.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Early committee shenanigans

Posted on by

The brief sitting of Parliament last week saw some committee shenanigans already underway, despite the new era of hope and optimism. Because of political considerations, as in not having enough members for official party status, the Bloc were denying unanimous consent to form new committees as they won’t have a voice on them. While they relented on the creation of the special joint committee on assisted dying – which they nevertheless still want a voice on even if they can’t vote – they continued to deny the formation of the Finance Committee, which means that it now can’t hold any pre-budget consultations. So while rules are the rules around who can sit on committees, and we were reminded when these tactics were going on that the Bloc themselves were adamant that they be followed to deny NDP and PC MPs seats on committees back in the nineties, times change apparently, and now they want to throw their weight around. As for the Liberals, they’ve already undermined their promise not to have parliamentary secretaries sit on committees by assigning the House Leader’s parliamentary secretary to the Procedure and House Affairs committee, but he insists that he won’t vote – just assist other members. That sounds suspiciously like the PMO still trying to bigfoot the committees, and exert undue influence on what should be independent operations that have a duty to hold government to account – something that becomes more difficult when you have a someone charged with assisting the government in the ranks. One hopes that they come to their senses and knock it off before things really get underway, but it is a disappointment that they are not living up to the spirit of that promise, if not the letter. (Also, Charlie Angus is lamenting the partisanship on committees? Has he looked in a mirror lately?)

Continue reading →

Roundup: The Senate steps up

Posted on by

In their very first piece of legislation passed, the House of Commons ballsed it up. Quite badly, in fact. In rushing through a supply bill, they didn’t include a necessary schedule for where the money that was being authorised would be spent, which is a pretty big deal. And so, when it reached the Senate, this was caught and the bill had to be sent back before the Senate could deal with it and pass it so that it could get Royal Assent and everyone could go home for the holidays. The Senate, however, was not amused. This is not the first time that defective bills have made it to the Senate, be it when they sent an earlier unamended version down the hall, or when their due diligence wasn’t done and they had to make some kind of excuses to get the Senate to pass it anyway with the promise of adding a clause in a future bill to retroactively fix it. And the patience of the Senate is wearing thin. In the words of Speaker Furey:

“While it is not our place to look into the functioning of the House of Commons, I am appalled that we received a defective bill. If it is the wish of the house, I would be prepared to write to my counterpart in the House of Commons to seek his assurance that this will not happen again.”

Liberal Senator Terry Mercer was even less forgiving and deservedly so:

“It galls me, Mr. Speaker, that they talk about an administrative error. That’s passing the error off onto the staff. I’m sorry; the Members of Parliament voted on this; it is their fault and they alone take the blame… To give us this BS about administrative error, passing the buck off to someone in the administration of the House of Commons, doesn’t wash with me, and it shouldn’t wash with anybody, and it shouldn’t wash with Canadians. I want this to be notice to the Minister of Finance and to our colleagues in the other place that this place will not put up with this anymore.”

Senator Fraser suggested that the Commons needs to examine their system and perhaps even apologise to the Senate, while other Senators noted that this is government legislation and not a private member’s bill, and that perhaps the Senate should not always be as patient and perhaps rise without granting Royal Assent in the future. Part of the root of this is that that the Senate, yet again, did its job while the Commons didn’t. In their haste to get this passed so that MPs can leave, MPs spent a grand total of fifteen minutes on the Supply bill, including Committee of the Whole. That’s right – fifteen minutes to examine and authorise the spending of money by the government. The Senate Finance Committee held three days of pre-study on the bill so that they would know what the issues were, and lo and behold, when the bill arrived in defective form, they could spot it immediately. And as noted before, this keeps happening with increasing frequency. And yet, when we send MPs to Ottawa to “be our representatives,” we seem to forget that they have a job to do – to scrutinize bills, and most especially spending, and they’re not doing it. They leave it to others to do, be it the Auditor General, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or the Senate – all while bitching and moaning about how terrible the Senate is even though the Senate is actually doing their jobs when MPs aren’t. And the next time I hear someone give me the line about how the Senate has no function in a modern democracy, I can give them yet another object lesson about how the Commons is the real dysfunctional chamber in our democracy. I’ll repeat Speaker Furey’s admonition – it’s appalling. Shape up, MPs. You’re embarrassing yourselves.

Continue reading →

Friday QP Recap: A few bad habits creeping in

Posted on by

I’m generally not in the habit of writing up Friday QP recaps, but I wanted to make a few observations of how Friday QP unfolded under the new Liberal government. Fridays, as most people know, are generally B-team days, with leaders rarely present, and only ever a small number of ministers, meaning one tends to generally get deputy critics quizzing parliamentary secretaries. It had been my hope that the Liberals would phase out the practice of letting said parliamentary secretaries answer questions in QP, because it ultimately have issues with the accountability role of QP – questions are asked of the government, which means cabinet, because they have access to the answers. Parliamentary secretaries, despite getting some briefing notes, don’t have those actual answers, so it generally becomes much more about the show than anything else. Over the past number of years, the scene has degenerated so that the painful scripted performances from either side of the aisle are unbearable to watch. Sure, you had a handful of parliamentary secretaries who could outshine their own ministers because they had learned their files while their ministers still read from the prepared talking points in front of them, but it also reached the point where parliamentary secretaries became the human shields for their ministers, absorbing the blows from bad media stories by taking fire on their behalf during QP. It’s why Paul Calandra became the spokesperson for all things unpopular on Harper’s plate. It’s a perversion of our system.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Trudeau’s troubling QP pledge

Posted on by

In an interview with Huffington Post, Justin Trudeau mused somewhat about his proposed changes to Question Period, where he is looking to institute a once-weekly Prime Minister’s Questions Period, akin to Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK, but wouldn’t commit to showing up any more days than that. Under Harper’s time in office, he went from three days to one or two, and only answering the questions of the other leaders when he did show up. Even if a theoretical Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were to show up once a week and answer all of the questions put to him, I’m a bit sceptical because it does limit availability. Part of what’s been the beauty of our QP as we have structured it is that the PM can be called upon to answer any question on any day, with no advance notice. That’s not the way it works in Westminster, where the PM is given questions in advance. Trudeau is also talking about staying out on the road to connect with Canadians, but insists that it’s not a diminution of parliament but rather the opposite, because he’ll have a capable cabinet that can handle things in his absence and it not be a one-man government. Fair enough, but anytime politicians insist that their time is better spent away from Parliament Hill is diminishing the role of parliament. We have a representative democracy, which means that people send their representatives here to debate and make the decisions. If those representatives decide they have better things to do, then what’s the point? I do find it a troubling sentiment because parliament matters. Pretending it’s a distraction from “the real issues” or just a “bubble” ignores that the work that does go on here is important and needs to be accorded with some actual respect. There is more to governing a country than doorstep issues, and it might behove a future Prime Minister to acknowledge that.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Balanced budgets are magic

Posted on by

Balanced budgets became word of the day on the campaign – Harper warning of permanent deficits if either opposition party gets in, Mulcair promising a balanced budget in 2016-17, and Trudeau hedging by not promising it immediately, given he doesn’t know the real state of the country’s books and we have some global economic turbulence going on. And then things started getting bizarre, with fiscal hawks praising NDP restraint (with no idea how they plan to achieve balance), and the Liberals attacking the NDP as promising more austerity to achieve said balance at a time of recession. And yes, the NDP’s new “star candidate” of the former finance minister of Saskatchewan said they would cut things, but some of the clues the party has dropped – things like “corporate tax giveaways” – are small change, and they even included the Senate on their list of things to cut, which makes me laugh uproariously because a) abolition will never happen, b) you’re not going to cut the Senate’s budget without either starting a war between the two chambers or starving them of the resources necessary to study and pass the legislation the Commons wants passed, and c) any savings they think they’re going to book from Senate abolition would be eaten up and then some with court challenges of flawed bills and Royal Commissions for policy work the Senate did at a cost-effective manner. But keep dreaming. I tackled the subject of party spending promises in my column here, but in the meantime, here are some economists smarter than I, who are similarly doubtful about these balanced budget pledges, for very good reason.

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/636170339878174720

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/636355620640133120

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/636355876203429888

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/636357120372379648

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/636357255332536320

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/636357563399938048

Continue reading →

Roundup: A moratorium courting constitutional crisis

Posted on by

Without going too deeply into this (something I’ll save for later), Stephen Harper decided that his best way to “differentiate” himself on the Senate was to flout the constitution, and declare a moratorium on any future appointments. There are already 22 vacancies in the Chamber – a full fifth of its complement, and more than any in history. It’s unconscionable, because there are supposed to be 105 senators, and not a maximum of. It’s a complete abrogation of the compromises made by the Fathers of Confederation, and furthermore, it’s also flouting the decision of the Supreme Court who said explicitly that the Senate has a role with sober second thought. That role is already being compromised because they’re having trouble filling committee seats, and this is a very serious problem. On the one hand, this official declaration of a moratorium is a gift to Vancouver lawyer Aniz Alani, who has launched a challenge in Federal Court to get a declaration that the Prime Minister is obligated to make appointments as they happen. It’s also courting problems with federal-provincial relations for a couple of reasons – one is that Harper is now attempting to do through the back door what he won’t do from the front door (again), and he’s using a childish tactic of throwing this problem into the laps of the premiers to come up with some kind of solution without him. It also highlights that there is again a choice for voters in the election – you can vote to keep in a party whose leader flouts the constitution and the Supreme Court; one who promises to do the very same while chasing the pipe dream of Senate abolition; and one who has promised concrete and constitutional measures to reform the appointment process in the same way that Harper did with vice-regal appointments. Oh, and in case you were wondering, if the courts declare that a Prime Minister has a constitutional obligation to make appointments as they happen – and that’s pretty much guaranteed – and the PM still refuses to, we’re into constitutional crisis territory where the Governor General will have the very real need to dismiss said PM. This is what we’re courting here. It’s not a trivial matter.

https://twitter.com/aaronwherry/status/624675200358055936

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/624675923984576512

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/624676159687671809

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/624676449245638656

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/624676790179655680

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/624677092953858048

Continue reading →

Roundup: Bemoaning members’ statements

Posted on by

Over in the National Post, Tristin Hopper despairs at how much of Hansard is taken up by ridiculous and ultimately meaningless members’ statements, not to mention the plethora of petitions. And while the notion of members’ statements used to be kind of sweet and noble, it’s largely degenerated into a daily dumpster fire in the Commons, with a handful of feel-good statements followed by a number of increasingly nasty partisan attacks. Petitions, however ridiculous many may be, is a measure of political engagement so we shouldn’t discount them just yet – and we’re about to see a whole bunch more of them now that they’re going to all electronic petitions. Hopper suggests we follow the European example and put Members’ Statements at the end of the day. I tweeted some thoughts on that.

Bottom line: Pretty much all of Parliament is terrible right now with speeches because we’re electing a cohort who has largely lost the ability to think for themselves on their feet, whose greatest skill now is reciting the lines that are given to them. (Not all are like this, but most are, and I will note that the Liberals seem to be the least scripted from the leaders’ office these days). While I can sympathise with Hopper, it’s not the rules that are the problem – it’s the fact that we have apparently stopped valuing MPs who can speak or think for themselves in favour of ciphers for the leader.

Continue reading →