PARLIAMENTARY PUSHBACK
The great parliamentary reform uprising is over, and the government’s forces have been routed.
Bardish Chagger introduced a package of rule changes for the House of Commons three months ago, with a misplaced sense of imperiousness. The measures unveiled by the Government House Leader included an end to Friday sittings; the introduction of electronic voting; limits on politically motivated prorogation; the creation of a Prime Minister’s Question Period; and the use of U.K.-style time allocation as an alternative to filibustering.
The changes were presented as a “discussion document,” but the imposition of a deadline on the study of the proposals suggested the intention was to ram them through.
What Chagger did not anticipate — but should TRUDEAU’S LIBERALS LOSE POWER STRUGGLE CENTRED ON DESIRE TO CHANGE HOUSE RULES have — was the wave of uncivil disobedience that followed, powered by the perception that she was attempting to alter the rules to her government’s advantage.
The opposition parties gave warning last year they would not accept unilateral changes to House procedure when they resisted Motion 6, the catalyst to the War of Trudeau’s Elbow.
With the standing orders power-grab, the Liberals succeeded in giving strange bedfellows a sense of common cause. The Conservatives and NDP used every parliamentary trick in the book to filibuster a government agenda the newly emboldened Senate had already reduced to a crawl.
The government was forced to climb down in April, removing the most egregious of the changes, while insisting that those contained in its election platform remained sacrosanct — namely, an end to politically motivated prorogations; limitations on omnibus bills; an attempt to make sure the estimates are a reflection of the budget; a ban on parliamentary secretaries voting on committees; and a Prime Minister’s Question Period.
The opposition, sensing the government had overextended itself, continued to pound away, threatening 30 hours of votes in the dying days of the parliamentary session unless they got satisfaction.
Late Thursday, they did — the agreed amendments to the standing orders were released, and they are as thin as mist.
Notably, the promised Prime Minister’s Question Period is nowhere to be found.
Mark Kennedy, director of communications to the government House leader, said in the U.K. the practise is merely a convention and the same will now apply here.
“Prime Minister’s Question Period is here to stay under this government,” he said.
We’ll see. Justin Trudeau did not look like he was having fun Wednesday, when he was pummelled for the entire Question Period on topics ranging from the big issues of the day — Chinese takeovers, rising debt levels — to more arcane subjects like potential illegal activity at Shared Services Canada and autism funding.
Perhaps the more flexible application of this policy, evident in the concession to omit it from the standing orders, will soon be reflected in the frequency of the Prime Minister’s attendance on Wednesdays.
Regardless, the amendments don’t come close to fulfilling Chagger’s mandate from the prime minister of “making Parliament relevant again.”
“We want to ensure the prime minister and the members of Cabinet are held to greater account in the House of Commons, not less,” she told the House procedures committee Thursday.
But the other parties did not believe her claims of political benevolence.
And why should they? The Liberals have proven their capacity for petty partisanship time and again — from appointing a provincial Liberal to the post of Official Languages Commissioner to the “signs of decline” in transparency across Canada’s democratic institutions, noted in the latest report from Suzanne Legault, the Information Commissioner.
It’s too bad. As one of the more sensible members on the Procedure and House Affairs Committee noted, if the standing orders are not updated, they ossify.
“They are a living document,” said Liberal Arnold Chan.
But the Liberals have learned the hard way that the rules governing this most precious of institutions can only be amended by consensus, not by parliamentary cosh.