PARLIAMENT HILL—Stiff government limits on debate in Parliament that NDP MP Martin claims stirred him into cursing on Twitter spread into the Commons Justice Committee Thursday, where the Conservative majority took opposition MPs by surprise with a sudden motion to end detailed study of a controversial mega-crime bill by midnight.The move prompted Liberal and NDP MPs to mount a filibuster, and as the day wore on to eat up committee time and stave off the Conservative committee closure, mixing allegations that the Conservatives were hijacking democracy with pointed complaints about how the 102-page crime bill, a consolidation of nine separate bills from the last Parliament, will radically transform Canada’s justice system into a punitive, lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key imitation of criminal laws and penal systems that are widely seen as a costly social and economic failure in the United States.
Despite heated exchanges the government move sparked, the two sides worked out a deal late Thursday to complete the final hearings over two days next week. But the opposition continued to insisted the legislation contains measures that are too important to deal with in one swipe and in one bill.
Liberal MP Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Que.), a former justice minister who has separately launched a privilege complaint over suspected Conservative whispering that he’s set to resign his Montreal seat, said radical changes to the Youth Justice Act are an example of changes the government wants to rush through in one massive bill that deserve closer scrutiny that would be allowed by separate committee hearings in individual bills.
“It transforms the whole concept of the Youth Justice Act, it transforms it from a preventive approach to a punitive approach, from a rehabilitative approach to an incarceration approach, from a permanent solution to an instant ban-aid solution,” Mr. Cotler told The Hill Times.
“The point is, this is not one bill, it is nine separate pieces of legislation,” he said. “Each bill deserves its own separate and informed treatment. You come without notice and say, ‘We have to conclude our discussions today,’ was to me a very sad day for our Parliamentary democracy, and a sad day for our constitutional democracy.”
Government closure on the House Justice Committee piled up on time allocation and closure motions it has used seven times in the Commons since September to cut off debate on budget measures and other controversial legislation, including an explosive bill that proposes to dismantle the federal long-gun registry and destroy all its records. Mr. Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) ignited a whirlwind of debate on Twitter and in parliamentary corridors early Thursday morning after he called a closure motion on Budget Bill C-13 “a fucking disgrace” and in the same tweet said “there’s not a democracy in the world that would tolerate this jackboot shit,” and told one follower, “fuck you,” and typed in the hash tags #ndp and #cdnpoli.
NDP MP Jack Harris (St. John’s East, Nfld.), the party’s justice critic who led the opposition filibuster in the Justice Committee, accused the Conservatives of “putting the mock in democracy.”
Mr. Harris quoted Conservative complaints in the past about Liberal majority domination in Parliament, when the term “democratic deficit” became popular, said “if there was a democratic deficit then, what we’re witnessing now is a democratic recession, or depression.”
But Conservative MP Robert Goguen (Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe, N.B.), Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s (Niagara Falls, Ont.) Parliamentary secretary, claimed the 50 witnesses the committee had heard on the omnibus bill over eight two-hour hearings since last Oct. 6, provided enough testimony to put an end to the committee work with the bill’s final clause-by-clause study. Several Justice Department and Public Safety Department officials were on hand for the detailed study that was to take place Thursday and watched from the sidelines as the filibuster dragged on.
“We’re willing to roll up our sleeves and go right until midnight, in 15.5 hours of continual work to get this thing through, with their comments and with their amendments and all this being done, and the objective is to protect the public,” said Mr. Goguen, a rookie MP elected for the first time last May who, as with more than 100 MPs in the new Parliament, was not present when the House went through debate and committee work on the crime measures as separate bills in previous Parliaments. The omnibus bill includes new elements that were not dealt with in the past.
“The witnesses were all done in the previous sessions, there were 50 witnesses, they called their witnesses, we called our witnesses, it was very well attended, everyone was questioned, all part of a process that went through, now we’re to the point where we have to pass this through,” Mr. Goguen told The Hill Times.
“Even after this, it hasn’t gone to the third reading, it hasn’t gone to the Senate, so I mean how long will the victims of Canada stay and wait for us to actually do what they asked us to do, and that is to protect them,” he said.
The Conservative government first used closure in the 41st Parliament last June, to legislate locked-out Canada Post employees back to work. Since September, the government has imposed time allocation to cut short debate on: Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, on Sept. 27, after it had been tabled seven days earlier; and Budget Bill C-13, on Oct. 6, after its introduction on Oct. 4, and again on Nov. 15, following its study in committee.
The government also used time allocation on Bill C-18, to end the Wheat Board’s monopoly over grain marketing in Western Canada, on Oct. 19; Bill C-19, which will dismantle the federal long-gun registry, on Oct., 26; and Bill C-20, legislation intended to hastily begin adding new seats to the House of Commons as the government awaits the final results of the 2011 census, on Nov. 3.
Origin
Source: Hill Times
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