A sham of a hearing
Tories’ behaviour borderline anti-democratic
Even in the darkest days of the Second World War, Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons with the latest news, good or bad, and never shrank from a vote of censure.
“I am,” he used to say, “a servant of the House of Commons.”
The great Tory leader would probably be appalled by Canada’s Conservatives, who appear to believe the acronym MP stands for Masters of Parliament, given the way they treat its institutions like whipped dogs.
The recent hearings into the anti-terror legislation were, in the words of Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, “a sham.” Forty-nine witnesses appeared over 16 hours but the most enduring statement was made by Conservative MP Rick Norlock, who asked Carmen Cheung of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, “Are you fundamentally opposed to taking terrorists off the street?”
Four minor amendments were adopted, including a loosening of the type of activity deemed to undermine security, to exclude unlawful but peaceful protest, and a clarification that agents from Canadian Security Intelligence Security do not have arrest powers. But the most vocal concerns were not addressed.
Parliamentary oversight, which would have ameliorated some of the legislation’s excesses, was never considered. The reasons why are instructive.
An exchange with a senior Conservative reveals the mistrust between the government and the opposition is not just between individuals, it’s systemic.
The MP said if Canada’s parliamentary culture was similar to that of the U.S., Britain or Australia, where two parties alternate in power, the government would have had no problem with parliamentarians forming a national security committee with oversight powers over all departments and agencies, since there is a degree of “maturity” about security issues.
However, Canada has had the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party as the Official Opposition. The latter has opposed every security bill and every military engagement since 1945, save (briefly) the Libya campaign, he said.
“How can we grant access to the country’s most sensitive secrets to people who want the country to fail [the Bloc] or have no confidence in the entire security apparatus [the NDP]?”
This strikes me as wandering beyond partisan arrogance into terrain that is borderline anti-democratic. Would a Bloc MP break a sworn oath of secrecy and endanger national security for partisan advantage? Has NDP Leader Tom Mulcair broken his oath as a privy councillor to keep secret matters revealed to him in that capacity?
As Churchill told the House of Commons in 1947, “We accept in the fullest sense of the word, the settled and persistent will of the people. All this idea of a group of supermen and super-planners making the masses of the people do what they think is good for them, without any check or correction, is a violation of democracy.”
Holding opposition members in contempt is also a violation of democracy and has reduced our governing institution to the status of a Potemkin parliament. It has become a fake legislature designed to fool the tourists and visiting dignitaries Canada retains a vibrant parliamentary democracy.
Conservatives view the antiterror legislation as moderate and point out many of their number got into politics to ad- vance policies like Bill C-51.
That may be the case for some, but I suspect many more Conservatives got into politics to make sure governments didn’t bring in laws that looked over their shoulder or bossed them around. I suspect many more of them took up the calling because they believe, as Churchill did, it is not Parliament that should rule; it is the people who should rule through Parliament — even if they vote for the Bloc or the NDP.
Adversarial partisan politics has ruined the effectiveness of our parliamentary democracy — and the Conservatives, as the government for the past nine years, bears the brunt of the blame.