Parliament in Review: November 1, 2011

Yes, a couple of the Cons' more odious bills have already made their way into law. But let's at least resume a look back at the arguments they so flippantly ignored in pushing through their first set of legislation - with the November 1 debate on the gun registry offering plenty of cases in point.

The Big Issue

Once again, the main topic of discussion was the Cons' choice to trash the gun registry and the underlying data - with particular emphasis on the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's public statement that the gun registry data could be shared with a province by agreement. Both Dennis Bevington and Pierre Jacob questioned the gap between the Cons' privacy spin and the public position of the Privacy Commissioner, and Kevin Lamoureux, Anne Minh-Thu Quach and Rosane Doré Lefebvre noted that the effect of destroying the gun registry data was to impose utterly gratuitous costs on the provinces who have stated an intention to create their own versions. But of course, those points were met with precisely no substantive response - even when Quach posed her question to Peter Penashue, whose role as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs would seem to make him the cabinet member with direct responsibility to deal with the provinces on such issues.

Meanwhile, Mike Sullivan countered another of the Cons' lines of spin (about not being responsible for deregistering sniper weapons since they hadn't changed the classification structure) by pointing out that the classification structure itself was only becoming relevant due to the choice to scrap the long gun registry, while Carol Hughes pointed out that the bill was sorely lacking for consequential changes to patch over obvious holes in Canada's gun control system. Pierre-Luc Dusseault wondered why victims of gun crimes apparently don't rate any consideration as part of the Cons' usual spin about concern for victims. Quach noted the importance of the gun registry in border enforcement. Elizabeth May was appalled by the Cons' mockery of the importance of archiving and data preservation. Nathan Cullen lamented the gun registry bill as an example of wedge politics, and criticized the Cons for neither knowing nor caring what it would cost to destroy the data from the existing registry.

On the Cons' side, Lynne Yelich made an interesting statement about how she came to be elected:

On how many calls have come into my office, when we were elected, I would venture to say that 99.9% of my votes were what mandated us to end the gun registry alone. That is how many calls I received. People told us to get ride of the gun registry now that we had a majority government. They said that that they had sent us to Ottawa to get rid of it and that if we did not, they would start their own party and get rid of it.

Needless to say, the assertion that Yelich was elected solely to get rid of the gun registry would look to be a rather useful concession anytime the Cons try to claim a mandate to do anything else at all.

But in the end, the Cons voted down the NDP's proposed amendments and forced through the bill as written.

Hunger for Action

The other main theme of the day arose out of new data on food bank use - with Sean Casey and Jean Crowder focusing on the overall 26% increase since 2008, while assorted NDP MPs highlighted the even more drastic increases in food bank use among people with disabilities, seniors, Quebeckers and northerners and criticizing the Cons' utter lack of interest in addressing the deprivation that's led to those shameful figures.

But the Cons did make clear what type of social priority they do value - as Shelly Glover responded to questions about increasing food bank use by chastising the NDP for failing to support non-refundable tax credits carefully crafted to offer as little as possible to the families who might actually need to use one.

In Brief

Another bill also found its way to committee, as Joe Comartin's bill to eliminate a Criminal Code prohibition against single-event sports betting won all-party support on its way to passing at second reading. The Cons and Bloc voted down the NDP's asbestos motion. Romeo Saganash's question on the oil and gas sector received several remarkable answers, including that Natural Resources Canada hasn't bothered to conduct the slightest bit of analysis either as to how a carbon price would affect natural gas use, or as to how natural gas use might affect Canada's ability to meet its greenhouse gas emission targets. And Don Davies introduced a private member's bill to provide for a renewable energy development strategy.