Parliament in Review: December 8, 2011

Thursday, December 8 saw debate on four separate bills - though once again, the Harper Cons were most conspicuous by their silence on a bill they were in the process of ramming through Parliament.

The Big Issue

That would be the Senate patch job which was being debated at second reading. And once again, the governing party decided to stay silent rather than bothering to speak to its own legislation.

Pat Martin asked rhetorically whether there's any reason for public policy to originate with an unelected and unaccountable body, while both he and Francois Lapointe raised the obvious problem of the Senate's ability to nullify the decisions of actual elected officials. On the specifics of the Cons bill, Anne Minh-Thu Quach and Dany Morin offered up reminders that the Cons' plan is to make sure senators are never accountable to voters for their actions, Anne-Marie Day highlighted that the Cons' own bill contemplates the possibility that an election could be ignored and the result nullified after six years, and Bruce Hyer noted that the Cons' scheme discriminates against independent candidates. Jean-Francois Fortin reiterated the Bloc's agreement with the NDP that the Senate should be abolished, while Justin Trudeau suggested the position held by the two most popular federal parties in the province somehow reflects a failure to defend Quebec's interests. Jinny Sims discussed the gap between MPs whose work is based on public service and senators whose role is defined by patronage, while Isabelle Morin offered a reminder of Harper's propensity for appointing candidates who failed at the former into the latter role instead.

Marc-Andre Morin offered to rename the Cons' bill:

Mr. Speaker, to the title “An Act respecting the selection of senators”, I would add “to ensure that the Senate resembles the bar scene in Star Wars”, as my colleague said. Senators appointed for life, senators elected through some crazy, vague process, all at the provinces' expense, people who lost elections, friends: the Senate is a gold mine for comedians.

And finally, Martin delivered some justified outrage for the ages:

There has never been a prime minister who has so abused the Senate and taken partisan advantage as the current Prime Minister, with 32 appointments. After being the one who agreed that the Senate was an outdated and obsolete institution, he has been stacking the Senate for purely partisan reasons.

Let me give an example of this. The president of the Conservative Party, the campaign manager of the Conservative Party, the chief fundraiser of the Conservative Party, the director of communications for the Conservative Party, the entire Conservative war room is now sitting in the Senate, pulling down $130,000 a year of taxpayers money, with staff, travel privileges and resources.

Who was the campaign manager in the last provincial election in my home province of Manitoba? The Conservative Senator from Manitoba, and I do not know if I am allowed to use his name. The former president of the Conservative Party was power shooted into Manitoba on the taxpayer nickel to work full time in partisan activities. He never has to stand for an election because he is there for life to act as an agent of the Conservative Party, not as the chamber of sober second thought, and is salaried, staffed and paid for in a direct subsidy by the taxpayers of Canada. It is appalling and it is atrocious. The senate should be abolished. It is a disgrace that we are using up time in our chamber to even re-arrange the deckchairs on that ridiculous institution.

There must be some old Reformers who have a hard time looking at themselves in the mirror, considering the things they used to say about the Senate. Now they are one. They have become what they used to most criticize. They have tossed overboard every principle on which they were founded in the interest of political expediency. They have been jettisoned over side. It is a disgrace.

Bank Shots

The other bill up for debate was the Cons' campaign loan legislation. Tim Uppal lamented the influence of wealthy individuals through loans to leadership candidates, but didn't have much to say about a concern raised by Stephane Dion and Ted Hsu about giving banks a privileged role in deciding who they deem worthy of funding. David Christopherson questioned how the new requirements might apply at the riding level, and noted that a system which prevents parties from funding elections would be just as undemocratic as one which allows for big-money influence. And in response to a question from Uppal, Christopherson then implored the Cons to actually listen to other parties rather than dictating yet again that they wouldn't accept a single comma's worth of change to their bill.

In Brief

Fin Donnelly introduced a bill to prohibit the importation of shark fins, while Peggy Nash proposed to make the office of the parliamentary budget officer truly independent. Joe Comartin criticized the Cons' contempt for the rule of law, with their defiance of the Federal Court's Wheat Board decision as just the latest example (as also noted by Frank Valeriote in a question of privilege). An NDP question period strategy of asking for basic information was met with the Cons' usual stonewalling, as Nycole Turmel's question on a U.S. trade agreement along with Christine Moore and Matthew Kellway's questions about the cost of using helicopters were all met with equally glaring non-responses. Charlie Angus noted that the Cons' had managed to make matters worse in Attawapiskat by sticking the band with the $300,000 tab for a government-imposed manager. Alexandre Boulerice followed up on the transfer of money out of a green infrastructure fund into whatever the Cons thought would buy votes that week. Francoise Boivin highlighted the costs of the Cons' dumb-on-crime policy, while Andrew Cash questioned whether prisons are the Cons' only housing strategy. Alice Wong answered questions from Irene Mathyssen and Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe on seniors' poverty by claiming poor seniors should be satisfied knowing that their wealthy betters are paying less tax. And Ryan Cleary closed debate on his bill calling for an inquiry into Newfoundland's cod fishery, while Kirsty Duncan spoke to her bill on CCSVI treatment for multiple sclerosis.