Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, May 04, 2012

How Stephen Harper learned to love the omnibus bill

Stephen Harper must wish all his old speeches had been burned. A lament from his opposition days about the former Liberal government’s use of omnibus bills was cast up by NDP House leader, Nathan Cullen, Thursday, in protest at the government’s decision to pile everything but the kitchen sink into its 421 page budget implementation bill.

At that time, the Prime Minister considered the use of omnibus bills undemocratic and “a contradiction to the conventions and practices of the House.”

Now the 2005 Liberal omnibus is a model of governance to be admired and aped.

Such is the Harper government’s contempt for normal process, it announced Thursday that it will limit debate on the bill to six more sitting days before it is sent to committee. There is simply no way that MPs will be able to give the budget bill the scrutiny it deserves.

It makes you wonder: What is the point of Parliament? Why not have one whopper of a bill once a year, allow MPs to give it a cursory skim and then send them back to their constituencies to do the ceremonial work of opening supermarkets and attending Rotary barbecues?

“Lumping it together in an omnibus bill like this is undermining the very institution that we all represent, and our ability to hold government to account,” said Mr. Cullen in the House.

The main source of angst is the 150 page section of the bill focused on “streamlining” environmental oversight of industrial development – legislation the opposition parties believe guts environmental protection.

They say there is no reason for these provisions to be in a budget bill and have called for them to be carved out and introduced as separate legislation.

The government claims that it is merely responding to calls from bodies like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to make the Fisheries Act more “workable”.

There may well be a good case for the reforms that reduce duplication of environmental assessments by Ottawa and the provinces, not to mention taking a cattle prod to the inevitable bureaucratic foot-dragging over unnecessary reviews that act as a barrier to investment. But that case should have been made in full view at the environment committee.

The finance committee, where the budget bill will be aired, has neither the expertise nor interest in ensuring this legislation is sound from an environmental perspective. The government has said it will constitute a special sub-committee to look at “responsible resource development” but details on that are thin.

Two years ago, the government introduced an 880 page omnibus budget bill – half the entire of workload of Parliament from the previous year – and was roundly condemned for turning the legislative process into a farce.

It too was stuffed with legislation that had nothing to do with the budget – that is, they were not money bills requiring a parliamentary vote to appropriate money for a specific use. In reality, it was a grab-bag of bills which the government wanted to pass quickly.

In that case, the Tories had the fig leaf of an excuse, in that they were operating in a minority parliament and the opposition parties were grinding their agenda to a standstill.

That is clearly not the case any longer.

None of this is to suggest that giving MPs more opportunities to flap their gums is a panacea.

Parliamentary committee watchers can attest they are not exactly the Spanish inquisition. The seven Conservatives on the Public Accounts committee, which met Thursday to examine the F-35 saga, were forensic in their questioning of senior bureaucrats – at least, when it came to asking the Sir Humphreys how brilliant they thought the Conservatives new fighter plane secretariat would prove. But the committee did hear from Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, that he thought the government deliberately low-balled the cost of the F-35s.

In other words, Parliament is still breathing, despite being starved of oxygen.

But prime ministerial power is unprecedented and it is not in the governing party’s interests to impose checks and balances.

As Mark Jarvis and Lori Turnbull wrote in the National Post earlier this week, prime ministers in Canada now have the power to make decisions that “limit or negate Parliament’s role as a guardian for accountability in our democratic system.”

It would be hard to think of a more compelling example than the current budget implementation bill.

As Mr. Harper once put it: “In the interests of democracy, I ask how can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote on a block of such legislation?” Shame he changed his tune when he was elected to the highest office in the land.

Original Article
Source: national post
Author: John Ivison

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