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Senate Kills C-311
November 18, 2010 - 2:34pm
This makes me want to be ill:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/unelected-t...
So - Harper can now do in the Senate what he has been doing in the House for 5 years - passing or defeating anything he wants without the need for a majority.
Gosh, more and more like America. Surprise, surprise. 'Learning from the best' I guess...
I have no use for the Senate, but I don't see what's unprecedented about the Senate defeating a bill passed by a majority in the House of Commons. It's happened before. Some constitutional expert might give examples. Ah, I looked up one...it blocked the Mulroney GST bill in 1990, forcing Mulroney to play tricks with the system in order to get the bill through. You might say the Senate was doing a good thing then, but I suppose it depends on whose ox is being gored. I see also that some Liberal senators assisted in this defeat
It's unbelievably undemocratic...we are the only country in the free world that has this kind of parliamentary body, unelected but with a veto power. The British House of Lords lost their power a long time ago.
Of course it should be abolished. But it won't be, ever....
http://senatehalloffame.ca/
The Senate is a festering pustule on the arse-end of Canada's democracy.
Of course the double standards of the REformatories have kicked in, because afterall it is "environmental". So they will support this additional undemocratic action of Harper and Iggy.
The idea of the Senate is to be a barrier to the otherwise unconstrained will of elected MP's. MPs' primary purposes are to serve the special interests that elected them, whereas the Senators don't have to sell their soul every 4 years. Without the Senate, and without the ability of the GC to reject legislation, Canada could end up becoming another Nazi Germany.
Continued Canadian freedom needs the Senate.
Now, the idea of Senators being appointed by the PM is another matter. But they hand around longer than the PM's, so the idea is that Senate ideology evens-out to protect Canadians.
From the CBC timeline on abortion:
1990: The federal government, led by Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, introduces Bill C-43, which would sentence doctors to two years in jail for performing abortions where a woman's health is not at risk. The bill is passed by the House of Commons, but dies in the Senate after a tie vote.
I should note that this was the last time the House of Commons ever tried to criminalize abortion. I vaguely remember a rabble discussion a few years ago of this and other decisions, and lots of people applauding the Senate as a body that can take a sober second look at legislation passed by the House.
ETA: This is not a defence of the most recent Senate decision, which was made, amazingly, without so much as a debate! But I wonder whether, looking back at the Senate's killing of Bill C-43 in 1990, Jack Layton would say, "This was one of the most undemocratic acts that we have ever seen in the Parliament of Canada."
But did the Senate do a clause by clause review of the proposed C-43 legislation? My guess is that they did. Similar to the committee work they did when they uncovered the censorship clause in the omnibus tax bill (C-50?) prior to the last election.
From what I understand, the last time the Senate went straight to a vote and defeated legislation passed by the Commons was in 1925.
the problem to me is that the media deliberately avoids covering what the senators are up to, so no one pays any attention, leading to indifference to having elected senators. i think people stay away from the issues because for them it's like voting for school trustee. Most people don't even know who they are in the first place or what they do so therefore aren't clamoring to elect them.
it's unfortunate because it is a crucial reform to the system that would i think move forward the democratization of the country, even if just a little bit.
Prepsre to defend.
I want to address this issue in a couple ways--
Perhaps this should be moved to the politics section because the issue of the method of downing of the bill is the subject of the thread rather than the environmental purpose the bill had. That is with no disrespect to the importance fo the bill.
Post #3 requires a response as there is a hugely important distinction with precedents from the past.
First, the Senate is killing the bill without even the pretense of a debate. This reflects not only a disagreement with the House over a bill but contempt for the will of the House. At minimum, any bill passed by the House ought to be at least debated.
Second, the Senate, in the past, has defeated bills proposed by the government in the House and passed with a parliamentary majority, in many cases whipped. This is different. In this case the government was defeated by not only a majority of the Members of the House in a vote that was not whipped, but also by 3 of 4 parties in the House in a minority situation. The government is in effect acting in opposition to the parliament that it claims to lead. The House is supposed to be respected by the government since the government is a product of that House and it is only the composition of the House that lends any legitimacy to the government. The opposition, on the other hand has a role as opposition and is expected to oppose. It does not have the same responsibility as a governing party for good reason. The governing party as well has a tremendous amount of power over the parliamentary agenda and is not expected to act in opposition to the very institution that creates it.
For a government to kill a bill passed by the House without debate is extraordinary and as far as I know unprecedented. If anyone has an example of this happening please advance it.
This is of tremendous importance considering the executive turn the government has taken where prolongations are no longer for the purpose of managing the agenda but avoiding the will of the House (that too was an important distinction). All of the institutions of government have been co-opted by a party that has failed to win majority control even in a First Past the Post system that exaggerates power.
There are a couple issues we must consider as these unprecedented moves on what is remaining of the integrity of Canada's democratic institutions. The first is the willingness of the parties who created this legislation to accept the will of the minority. Will they now bring a vote of non-confidence in the government? If not then they are as much participants in the evaporation of democracy here.
The second issue is one the voters have to recognize. We cannot simply say our system is broken and that all politicians are the same. This government has taken a remarkable run at the democratic institutions of this country. The voters in the last election allowed the government to return with greater power after breaking its own election law. We must all, individually and collectively, recognize that political power is a position of trust. We cannot blame our institutions for failure when we elect people we have good reason to not trust with the institution from a perspective of democratic process. We may disagree with important policies but the democratic process should only be in the hands of people who respect it. I recognize there is a continuum. Other governments in the past have shown themselves to be less than democratic. The institutions themselves have flaws. But the degree and comprehensiveness that this government has attacked these democratic institutions ought to concern, no, alarm, Canadians.
If the opposition does not move a vote of no confidence and ensure that every member is in the House to vote on that no-confidence, then they too need to be recognized as central to the problem. They ought to understand that this would be the very weakest issue for the government to go in to an election on. It would frame the election and play to the greatest weaknesses the government has. If the opposition cannot vote against the government in the best of circumstances then it is impossible to recognize that there is an opposition there. I hope all people reading this, if they value anything left of our democratic institutions to call their MPs, and MPs of all parties to tell them this.
I do not consider myself a spammer and I do not open lots of threads for no reason but I intend to copy this post to the Politics thread because this is an issue of democracy and politics as much as it is an issue of the environment.
Sean I believe Ian Capstick mentioned it last happend in 1939. The libs tried to with the GST but Malroney stacked the senate with I think 7 seats to pass it.
And yes can we at least move this to politics. I rarely check out much outside of about 4 forums.
Today is the liberal oppostion day. If it were the NDPs day I would put the enviroment forward as a confidence motion
Harper governs by fiat, ignoring any legislation or motion that doesn't suit his purposes, and there is no effective opposition to him. That is so even for bills that make it through both houses.
Example: Bill C-288, "An Act to ensure Canada meets its global climate change obligations under the Kyoto Protocol", passed February 14, 2007 by the House of Commons, by 161 votes to 113 at Third Reading, sailed through the Senate, and was given Royal Assent.
The bill wasn't killed - but as soon as it was passed, the government announced that it would ignore it. Source.
Trouble is, so did the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc, who had joined forces to get it passed. It was left to a lowly environmental organization to take the government to court for ignoring the act - and the Supreme Court finally declined leave to appeal earlier this year, without a whimper from any so-called "opposition" party.
The involvement of the Senate in this case is a sideshow. Harper could easily have treated C-311 just as he did C-288. Instead, he saw an opportunity to get all the suckers condemning rule by the unelected Senate.
Guess what his real aim is here.
Yet again, smarter than the other idiots, by a country mile.
ETA: For those who (like the "Opposition") have forgotten about Kyoto and Canadian law in that regard, here is a pretty good brief chronology of C-288, its adoption, the court battles, etc. What's missing is the political shitstorm that the Opposition parties never conducted - because... ummm...
Unfortunately now that he has gotten a taste of this, I expect Harper might continue to block parliament even if he is in opposition, so long as he has his Senate majority and remains as leader.
According to this G&M article, if a snap election were to be held today, "...the Liberals and New Democrats could combine for a total of 128 seats, one more than Prime Minister Stephen Harper's party is projected to win.
ETA: that still leaves the BQ as the 'wild card'. I have no idea how the BQ would react to having this power.
ETA: Unionist is, sadly, right - Harper would ignore the will of the House as he has in the past, or have the new Conservative majority in the Senate do his will.
It's good to see you back posting again, Boom Boom!
No kidding! Stick around, Boom Boom, we'll make it worth your while! And I hope your health has been good lately!
Apparently Catchfire disagrees.
I don't get that since there are obviously two distinct angles with two distinct circles of interested people and many people who are political do not go to the environment thread-- and certainly do not do so to find a predominantly political story. Even environmentalists may believe that you have to address this on the political side before the environment side has relevancy. The difference in the amount of traffic between the two places is obvious.
The fact that there is a huge political issue attached to this that is not relevant directly to the environment is clear. This is a political story not an environmental one and deserves to be in that thread. To not do so diminishes the importance of the political implications. My post was a call to political action (contacting MPs etc.) not over the environment but over the disrespect to democratic POLITICAL institutions-- I did not even address the issue of disrespect to the environment which I presume would be addressed here.
I view the closing of that thread as censorship and cannot respect Catchfire for it. The purpose of my post and thread was a call to action which is not central to this thread. Since so many other examples of thread proliferation exist and I have started so few, I can only conclude that there is also the issue of playing favourites here, especially with respect to proliferation of threads, in a way that is damaging to this community -- although that is not the first time I have raised this.
Indeed the incredibly important political angle, here, is in fact a thread drift to the environmental angle which deserves also to be discussed. Each topic deserves its own place and purpose.
The thread proliferation on Babble is so high without purpose within the same forums that it seems unbelievable to crack down here on this one where there are the different angles across two distinct forums each with their own purpose in having a rather different discussion.
So no, I can't agree with this rather short-sighted call by a moderator.
At least the closed thread is there for people to see and be directed here even if this is the wrong place for a political discussion. In the end the environmental angle will be swamped by the political angle here and the political angle is somewhat stifled. To bad for an important pair of issues.
Interestingly ALL of this thread is about politics and NONE is about the environment-- only because this political story happened on a bill relating to the environment do we have an excuse to place it here even if it is not obvious from the discussion that it is in the wrong place.
So, Sean, I was suggesting that Harper was (as usual) thinking many steps ahead of the dimwitted Opposition - and here we go:
Harper government tries to speed passage of Senate term-limit bill
Now, watch Ignatieff change gears and say "NO!!!".
What will Layton and Duceppe say?
You'd think they would already have thought this through in advance, no?
Harper has miscalculated here.
And there is value in longer term limits.
No, Ignatief is not so stupid as to oppose this.
The shorter the limits the faster the Senate will reflect the current House and the less of a role it can take in checking the current government. With shorter term limits it does not become more democratic- that only means it reflects the current PM faster.
It took Harper over 4 years to get control of the Senate -- shorter term limits would ahve allowed him to do it in 1-2 years. Ignatief will understand that he can undo Harper's majority faster with this Bill and Harper is not thinking this through.
If the limits are short then the Senate can no longer help provide political stability by representing the previous government to the current one for a time-- rather it will simply extend the PMO such that there will be no value at all to the chamber.
What would be smart for Iggy to do would be to propose an amendment that the Senate at least open debate before killing any measure approved by the House.
We should not support shorter limits-- they remove the ability for the Senate to provide a check on the PM. If we don't like this then abolition is the better way to go-- short terms are just more patronage, more pensions for fat cats and more power of the PMO to thwart the House.
Cool-- now we will have a wider discussion of the Senate in the "Environmental" Forum.
Sean and others, I have no problem moving this thread to Canadian Politics. Just ask!
People did already -- thing is there is a legitimate reason to have the environmental aspect of it discussed here and the political there. That was the point I made in my opening post before you killed the thread-- both the start and the end of my post addressed that. I think there should be a discussion in both places and people should keep the implications of the damage to the environment of overturning this bill here and the political implications there. Otherwise either of the discussions, both of which have value, can be derailed. Here the environmental side has been swamped with the political. There was no reason to kill either thread. I copied my post from here because I was trying to direct the political there.
Let's end this thread drift. I already moved this thread to CP as requested. There is plenty of room here for both discussions.
All in all a pretty crafty move by Harper--and undemocratic, and cynical and typical. It will be interesting to see the NDP's response.
Yeah, I agree about term limits, but that's not my point. Baird's request for unanimous consent is a manoeuvre to embarrass the opposition parties and pull the rug out from under the C-311 issue. That's my point.
How do you predict the three parties will respond to the request for unanimous consent?
I hope people recognize the term limit proposal as anti-democratic, turning the Senate in to a tool for the PMO more than it was before. With the old limits the Senate majority would take more than one mandate to change. Typically, this means that the government has to have back to back wins to get its way in the Senate.
I said above that Harper miscalculated but there is another issue that might show where he is coming from-- the shorter limit of course makes the PM more powerful as I said-- it also leaves the PM the ability to get rid of even those from his own party to ensure that he can not only control the Senate in terms of party majority but have a more personal control in that these are not previous Conservatives but the ones he put in there for the purpose of his own agenda.
When you think about it this reduces even political party power.
So reviewing the history what we see is one by one of the checks and balances on the PM being removed-- The House of Commons (close at will); the GG (bully in to becoming a meaningless mouthpiece of the PM rather than the country or parliament); Political parties (making political appointments more current expressions of the PMO); arms-length agencies (undermined and people fired by the PMO); Political financing rules (to be modified so only wealthy people will be able to express themselves politically in a financial sense); the courts (decisions of supreme court can be ignored); international agreements (can be ignored at will); opposition parties (manipulated with attack ads so they are afraid of their own shadows-- this is the fault of the Liberals); public information (gutted and controlled); the media (favoritism is unprecedented, PMO communications --read propaganda-- budgets increased dramatically).
So please, tell me what is left to check the PM? I think the answer is nobody but the voters who are fast asleep thinking all politicians are the same and they live in a democracy.
Sober second thought is not very effective when exercised by those drunk with power.