SELLEY: CHEERS TO PARLIAMENTARY SUPREMACISTS.
No need for this wonkishness, except right now
Had the federal Liberals proposed something less objectively outrageous than they did in a draft bill leaked to the press on Monday, Conservative MP Scott Reid might on Tuesday have been seen as something of a villain. Well, OK, even more of a villain.
By agreement between the parties, a skeleton crew of MPS was to convene to pass a sweeping package of anti-pandemic measures, including billions in financial aid for Canadian families and businesses. But Reid said he was going to show up, against instructions from his party whip, and deny the unanimous consent necessary to slingshot the package past the usual procedural steps and get it enacted immediately. As I write this, proceedings in the House of Commons have been suspended for several hours, with the parties apparently trying to find a way around Reid’s roadblock — and Reid is taking a fair amount of verbal abuse on the social media.
Reid’s reasons will strike many as the acme of wonkery. On March 13, he complains, under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, the House of Commons unanimously passed three fiscal bills that had not actually been tabled.
This violated parliamentarians’ most basic duty, he argues, and he was determined not to let another bill be passed without the proper scrutiny.
“Panic is never, ever, an excuse to override our ancient political conventions,” he writes on his website. “These conventions are the oldest and best protections that exist for our political liberties.”
Furthermore, Reid says he was determined on principle not to obey an order to stay home that stemmed from an agreement between his party and the government. “If the conventional obligation to not impede MPS from attending to the business of the House, and of voting therein, does not extend to the prime minister, then the system of responsible government which cost so many lives (to achieve) in Britain in the 1600s, and in 1837-38 in Canada, is undone,” he writes.
That sounds awfully grandiloquent — but much less so when you consider the first draft of the Liberal
bill essentially proposed installing Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau as co-emperors. Until Dec. 31, 2021, the finance minister would have had exclusive power to raise taxes, “purchase or hold a company’s shares” and extend credit without the palaver of parliamentary approval.
It was completely unsupportable, and completely unnecessary: The opposition parties have been clear they are willing to vouchsafe extraordinary measures to deal with these extraordinary times. If regular parliamentary procedure isn’t up to the task, as the Liberals insist, then what they initially proposed overshot the mark by 100 miles.
Was it a vastly too-clever attempt to make a fallback position seem reasonable? Or did they think Canadians might actually stand for it? I’d like to think we wouldn’t … but then, casual observers could certainly be forgiven for thinking prime ministers already run the country however they please. Especially when they have a majority government, they pretty much do. That’s how degraded our parliamentary democracy has become, and that’s why parliamentary supremacists like Reid are important especially in moments of crisis. It is always in moments of crisis that political leaders try to grab powers they don’t deserve, and in Canada it would be frighteningly easy. Most of those powers a prime minister could ever want have already been ceded to his office by generations of ovine MPS.
One nice little detail in Reid’s blog post concerns the consequences he faces: In theory, leader Andrew Scheer could simply kick him out of caucus, thereby effectively ending his political career. As it happens, however, the Conservative caucus adopted optional rules set out in the 2014 Reform Act stipulating that only caucus itself can expel a member.
The Reform Act was the much-abused and watered-down brainchild of Reid’s fellow wonk and parliamentary supremacist Michael Chong. At times since its passing it has very much appeared to be useless. Not just now, however. The wonks’ lonely struggles are not entirely in vain.
IT IS ALWAYS IN MOMENTS OF CRISIS THAT POLITICAL LEADERS TRY TO GRAB POWERS THEY DON’T DESERVE.