For what was possibly the final day of the Senate’s sitting, there was some tension after the shenanigans on Friday. Things got off with a single statement, regarding the terror attacks last week, and then it was onto Routine Proceedings. The deputy government leader, Yonah Martin, tabled a motion that the next sitting of the Senate would see them rise until mid-September. “You’ll be pretty lonely,” a Liberal senator heckled, knowing an election would be taking place then.
Tag Archives: Undermining Parliamentary Democracy
Roundup: Fobbing off your work to the Senate
With MPs having gone home for the summer to start the campaign in earnest (well, not including the one in six who aren’t running again), the Senate is still hard at work to get through the last of the government’s agenda before they rise. Included in this are three bills that were passed at all stages in the dying days. Now, none of these are controversial so far as we can see, but the fact that they were all rammed through on a voice vote with zero debate is not exactly an encouraging trend. More to the point, it forces the actual due diligence onto the Senate, which is their job, but once again, it seems that they’re doing the work that MPs can’t be bothered to do because they’re too busy doing things like holding concurrence debates on nine-month old Health committee reports on the dangers of marijuana (never mind that said report was a sham rammed through the committee thanks to the government’s majority, and that it ignored the bulk of witness testimony) in order to try and hammer the Liberals on their pot policy. Because that’s an effective use of time. It’s also extremely ironic that the NDP insists the Senate does no valuable work ad should be abolished – and yet they once again fobbed off their work to the Senate to deal with because they couldn’t be bothered. There is no such thing as unflawed legislation, and it’s the job of MPs to scrutinise it in order to hold the government to account. But for a party who believes so strongly in the infallibility of the House of Commons that they don’t want an upper chamber, they gave bills a free pass with zero debate. Wow. Way to go there, guys. Really showing that you’re taking your jobs seriously, and that you’re doing the job of accountability like the official opposition is supposed to. Kind of like how they’ve taken to fobbing off their homework to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. It’s behaviour like that that undermines the NDP’s whole argument for Senate abolition – not that I mind. But MPs should be embarrassed when they pass any legislation with zero scrutiny. You’re just making the case for your own growing irrelevance, which serves nobody’s interests.
Roundup: The galling abuse of the Information Commissioner
The Information Commissioner is very unhappy about the government’s move to retroactively change the law to protect the RCMP for destroying gun registry records despite promises to her office that they wouldn’t in order to fulfil Access to Information requests. That the RCMP broke the law by destroying the information, and the government is protecting them by retroactively changing the law and putting that change in the middle of the omnibus budget bill, sets a very bad precedent, she warns, and she’s right. While the government wanted the long-gun registry data destroyed for political purposes, there was other information of value in the data that wound up being destroyed that had little to do with any future attempts at recreating a registry – something the Conservatives have long been afraid of, and are pressing for the hasty destruction of data to impede. And the way she characterises this is genuinely frightening – that they are backdating changes to the law to make something legal after a finding of wrongdoing. She uses the example of the Sponsorship Scandal – what if the Liberal government of the day retroactively changed the law so that the Auditor General was ousted from her jurisdiction after the fact. It’s unconscionable. What’s even more galling is the way that the prime minister is shrugging this off as just “fixing a loophole.” No, it’s not. It’s wilfully undermining the Commissioner and her ability to do her job, which this government has already made nearly impossible through starving her office budget and wanton disregard of their obligations under the Access to Information regime. All while they call themselves “open and transparent.” It’s grotesque, abusive, and in violation of their obligations as the government of the day. And if anything is any more upsetting about this situation, it’s that the opposition parties were too busy electioneering in QP instead of raising bloody hell about this issue – the Liberals not asking until nearly the end, and the NDP not raising it at all. Thanks for doing your jobs in holding this kind of unconscionable behaviour to account, MPs. Gold stars all around.
Roundup: It’s not an authorisation
Today is the day that the Commons will be holding their non-binding vote on the motion to support the government’s decision to extend the military mission in Iraq and into Syria, but you wouldn’t know it based on the headlines out there right now. “Tories to push through authorization of Syria air mission,” says the Globe and Mail. Nope. It’s not an authorisation, and the Conservatives aren’t pushing it through because they have a majority and it was a foregone conclusion. “Avoiding Syrian air defences a concern as Commons set to approve war expansion,” says The Canadian Press. Still nope – it’s not an approval. It’s an expression of support. It’s right there in the text of the motion. Granted, the government is courting this kind of false interpretation by forcing an unnecessary vote in the first place, and no matter how correctly the motion is worded, they are presenting it as an authorisation or an approval when it’s not, precisely because politically it will help to launder the decision, and make it look like the Commons approved it when they didn’t. That way, when things to wrong – and they inevitably do – and the opposition does its job in holding the government to account, the government could say “the Commons voted on it,” and try to wash their hands of it. Except it’s not an approval, the motion states that, and We The Media need to stop playing the government’s game for them. So repeat after me – it’s an expression of support. That’s all.
Roundup: Loans and borrowing without oversight
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.
Roundup: Baird bows out
In the wake of John Baird’s resignation from cabinet (and coming resignation as MP – in the “coming weeks,” likely so that a by-election won’t need to be called before the general election), there is plenty of reaction to go around. There hasn’t been a lot of genuine speculation as to the reasons for why now was the time to go, other than the obvious calendar reason that with the parties looking to get their nomination races squared away in advance of the election, that he would need to clear the way so that his riding association could find a new candidate and get them into place in time. It has also been pointed out that Baird has had a keen sense of timing, knowing when it was time to get out of the Ontario PC party as it was on its way down, and the same may be the case federally (despite Baird’s effusive praise during his resignation speech). More than that, it seems clear that he’s got a plan for a corporate position to head to, but he needs to ensure that he’s got the ethics clearances in place. And no, I really don’t think he has any ambitions to come back and pursue the party’s leadership as he never had such ambitions and was more than willing to play the loyal number two. John Geddes has a longer-form treatment of Baird’s career. Michael Den Tandt says the departure leaves a problem for the Conservatives in Ontario. Don Butler writes of his “two-faces,” both partisan and collegial. Matthew Fisher notes that while Baird travelled widely, he didn’t really seem to accomplish much, and that the department will be glad to see him gone. CBC has thirteen of the more memorable Baird quotes, and seven of his files as minister of foreign affairs. And post-speech, Harper gave Baird the first of many awkward bro-hugs that followed.
On behalf of all Canadians, I thank John @Baird for his years of tireless devotion to Canada. http://t.co/P6Vg5HzKhm pic.twitter.com/FtAZmypv6y
— Stephen Harper (@stephenharper) February 3, 2015
Roundup: Economic bluster
The mood of the moment on the Hill is economic bluster in the light of falling oil prices and a delayed budget – not that there wasn’t some bluster around the Iraq mission to go around either. The NDP announced early on that they want an immediate fiscal update, the subject of today’s opposition day motion – along with the demand to create a budget that suits their particular terms, naturally. The government, however, spent the day playing as if nothing is really wrong. Sure, they’ve lost some manoeuvring room, but they insisted that they will a) balance the budget, b) deliver on all of their promises, and c) not make any more cuts, though one presumes that means any more cuts on top of the continued austerity programme that their whole “surplus” was built on. They can’t really explain how this will happen, other than to use the $3 billion contingency fund, to which Oliver has started talking about how it’s there to be spent and it’ll just go on the bottom line (i.e. national debt payments) otherwise. I will make the additional observations that the NDP were trying to roll the Target layoffs into their lamentations of economic doom and demands for a “jobs programme,” the Liberals were more focused on getting the actual figures for the hole in the budget that the drop in oil prices created and pointed out that Oliver has the information and wasn’t sharing it. It was a noticeable distinction.
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/559804485556781058
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/559804578800357376
Roundup: Voting attendance matters (Part II)
Following up on their report about MPs being absent from votes, the Ottawa Citizen tries to delve into the issue of just what happens to MPs who don’t show up. Usually, as these things go, the whips handle it and do so quietly. And if MPs don’t like what the whips have to tell them, then they have the option of walking – as it seems that Sana Hassainia did from the NDP. And as the numbers bear out, independent MPs with little incentive from party whips to show up, may just as well not. And that’s fine, really – if their constituents look at their voting records and see a whole lot of blanks, well, then they have a pretty good idea about what their MPs take to be a priority. What gets me is that the piece quotes the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation as saying that hey, MPs have plenty of jobs, and sometimes they’re more important than just standing up and sitting down. Except no – that’s one of the most important parts of being an MP, standing up for what they believe in, and being seen to do so, and being on the record for doing so. Voting is how things are decided in a democracy like ours, so when the people we send to make those decisions don’t bother to show up, well, it kinds of defeats the purpose. Despite the fantasy notions that people have about all the varied things an MP’s job is supposed to entail, it pretty much breaks down to holding the government to account, and the mechanism by which that happens is votes. It’s not rocket science. Making excuses for why MPs aren’t doing that job by voting – or having a good reason for why they’re not there to do so – doesn’t help the health of our system.
Roundup: Voting attendance matters
The Ottawa Citizen has been carrying on their look at MP attendance in its many forms, and this time turned to the voting records of ordinary MPs. The best ones tended to be Conservative MPs, while the worst were independent and Bloc MPs for the most part, though a few other exceptions were noted, in particular because those MPs were battling cancer (like Judy Foote and Peter Kent). One of the notables for terrible voter attendance was Sana Hassainia, an NDP-turned-independent whose reasons for leaving the party were apparently over the position on Israel, though there was backbiting at the time about her attendance. Hassainia’s issue is her small children – she’s had two since she became an MP, and since most votes tend to be around 5:30 in the evening three, sometimes four nights per week, she claims she can’t get childcare and has to miss them. That’s always one of those claims that bothers me because it’s not like these votes are surprises – they happen on a scheduled basis, so you would think that she would be able to better schedule childcare. As well, she’s not without means – she makes a lot of money as an MP, and has the wherewithal to hire a minder or a nanny who can accommodate those times when she’s needed to vote. And it doesn’t matter how engaged she says she is with her constituents – her job is to vote, and that means showing up to vote, and to stand up and be seen to be voting, which not only has symbolic import, but it’s also a time when MPs are actually all in the same place so contacts can be made, and she can engage with ministers on files she has concerns with because they’re right there. This is an important thing, and it should be considered nothing less than a dereliction of her duties if she can’t see that.
Roundup: 50 years, not six
Despite the government’s announcement of $200 million in new funds for veterans mental health over the next six years, digging into the documents shows that only $20 million of that will be spent over the next six years, while the remainder will be doled out over the next 50 or so years – until the last veteran with PTSD no longer requires the services. And cue the howls of outrage. I’m not sure why anyone is too surprised, as over-promising and woefully under-delivering has become this government’s forte – almost as much as re-announcing old money as though it were new funds several times over. This is no different, and the kind of indifference they are showing to the veteran community – despite campaigning on the banner of being great friends of the military – has been noticed, and it’s the subject of the Liberals’ latest series of ads, as they hope to use it as a wedge in the next election. Meanwhile, Julian Fantino has been absent from the whole affair over the past week as he’s been in Italy to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Italian Campaign in World War II.