THE GOVERNMENT’S PARLIAMENTARY REFORM PROPOSALS SHOW ‘HOW DEEPLY CYNICAL THE TRUDEAU PEOPLE ARE’ AS THE LIBERALS CLOAK THEIR DUPLICITY IN THE GUISE OF FAIRNESS, ANDREW COYNE WRITES.
Team Trudeau gives electorate plenty to be cynical about
The 18 months of the Trudeau government have been an education in cynicism. Every time you think you have plumbed the depths, every time you believe you have pierced the many veils of their duplicity, you are delighted to discover still another con wrapped inside the last — usually delivered by some smiling minister tweeting variations on “Better is Always Possible” and “Diversity is Our Strength.”
The Harper government never bothered to pretend they were anything other than grimly determined power-seekers, realists of the Don’t Get Your Hopes Up, This Is As Good As It’s Going to Get school. The Trudeau Liberals went to some lengths to emphasize they were something different — as if a rare window had been opened for a new kind of politics, whether by the Harper government’s excesses, or the changing of the generations, or the sheer dynastic appeal of the Hippie King. But of course the idealism was just a newer, slicker con, or perhaps an older, slicker one: Trudeau as Kennedy to Harper’s Nixon.
The latest chance to refresh our acquaintance with how deeply cynical the Trudeau people are — not have become: are — is the clutch of grubby expedients the government is now trying to stuff down the opposition’s throats, in the name, prettily, of “parliamentary reform.” Scholars of the Trudeau style will recognize the expression “reform,” like “meritbased appointments” and “evidence-based policy,” as a tell that some kind of humbug is afoot, and this is no exception: this is no more aimed at genuine reform of Parliament than the Harper government’s Fair Elections Act was aimed at making elections fair.
We had an early foretaste of this with the infamous Motion Six, when Dominic LeBlanc, that icon of new-age politics, was Government House Leader: a change to Commons rules that would have truncated Parliament’s right to debate bills — that would, indeed, have allowed a minister or parliament secretary to unilaterally adjourn the House, while imposing severe limits on the opposition’s ability to delay proceedings — had L’Affaire Elbow not intervened. That alone ought to have signalled how sincere Trudeau’s frequent protests of his devotion to democratic accountability are: as calculated, as fake — and as useful! — as his feminism.
Well now the Liberals are back, with a new, more attack-proof House Leader, Bardish Chagger, and a new attempt to rewrite House rules in the interest of “efficiency.” Officially it’s just a “discussion paper,” but if so it’s one the government seems peculiarly unwilling to discuss or even explain. Once again there are limits proposed on time-honoured procedural tactics with which opposition parties might delay government business or otherwise express their unhappiness. So, too, there are new and more draconian proposals to limit debate and scrutiny of government business, with fixed numbers of days set for each stage of a bill’s progress through the House — thus sparing the government the unpleasant necessity of passing a motion to curtail debate — limits on speeches in committee, and the elimination of Friday sittings.
Other proposals are more in the nature of missed opportunities. As in the British parliament, there is a proposal that one day of question period each week be reserved for questions to the prime minister, which would be more worthy of praise if this were in addition to his regular daily question period appearances and not, as seems strongly probable, in place of them. The only limit on the government’s power to prorogue the House, which Stephen Harper notoriously used to get out of tight political situations, would be a requirement for the government to explain its reasons for proroguing. (In fairness, the Liberals did not promise to limit this power, only that they would not abuse it.) More encouraging is a proposal to give the Speaker the power to break up omnibus bills into separate parts, with separate votes on each.
Taken as a whole, however, there is much in the document that might legitimately alarm the opposition. As if to rub the opposition’s noses in it, on the same day the “discussion paper” was unveiled, a motion was put before the relevant House committee (on Procedure and House Affairs), ostensibly on the initiative of a Liberal member, demanding it report back with recommendations for changes to the House Standing Orders by June 2. The government has offered no explanation for the unseemly rush; neither has it indicated a readiness to entertain any opposition amendments, on a matter that plainly affects the balance of powers within the House. It is not unreasonable to call this Motion Six Redux.
If all this sounds unduly suspicious, recall that there is a context to this. After the prime minister’s insouciant refusal to admit fault in the matter of the cash-for-access fundraisers, after the charade of “open nominations” in ridings that had clearly been fixed to suit the prime minister’s preferences, after the elaborate fraud that was Senate reform, after all the broken promises on everything from the combat mission against ISIL to the open bidding on the CF-18 replacement to — sigh — electoral reform, the Trudeau government has earned no benefit of the doubt. Whatever short-term advantage these and other ruses may have yielded them, they came with a price, and that price is very simple: as they are not to be trusted, so they are not, in fact, trusted.