He hasn’t.
But he has pushed the envelope like no one ever before on a process that many believe is contemptuous of the role of Parliament.
More remarkably, he has been doing it for years, blatantly, right under the nose of successive oppositions that chose to look the other way and are only now crying foul.
His budget implementation bill may be, as Liberal MP Irwin Cotler called it “ a sad chapter in Canadian Parliamentary history,’’ but it really is just a chapter in the Harper book.
Under the guise of implementing its budget, the Conservatives have dumped 425 pages of legislation on the Commons and allowed 28 1/2 hours to debate everything from an overhaul of environmental regulations, to changes in employment equity, to the elimination of an oversight position in Canada’s spy agency to provisions that give cabinet more power over employment insurance rules.
It will then send the bill to a committee and a specially struck subcommittee and have the provisions passed before Parliament recesses for the summer.
“This is not the first time but this is the worst time,’’ NDP House leader Nathan Cullen says, his appeals to have the bill split for proper debate rebuffed by the government.
It is easy to jump on the Harper Conservatives for subverting Parliament and governing by decree, but one can just as easily ask why the opposition has received such a late wake-up call on this matter.
Ned Franks, a professor emeritus of political studies at Queen’s University, has tracked the way Harper treats Parliament since coming to power.
Pre-Harper, Franks says, these bills were used to provide minor amendments to measures announced in the budget and under the Liberals, they ran about 65 pages in length. Paul Martin bumped one up to 102 pages.
Harper has already tabled budget implementation bills of 528, 644 and 880 pages before the current one, and in the last Parliament, 38 per cent of all the legislation passed by the Conservatives was wrapped up in budget implementation bills.
“The Harper government has proved ingenious in confounding normal parliamentary practices and preventing legislation from facing normal scrutiny.’’ Franks says.
It has also proved to be the master of pre-emptive time allocation, limiting debate before the opposition even threatens to slow things down.
This doesn’t surprise Don Boudria, a former Liberal government House leader, now an Ottawa consultant.
He says the Harper government is unique in its use of “pre-emptive’’ time limits on debate before anyone threatens to slow it down, “just as they have tabled back-to-work legislation for workers who are still on the job.’’
Boudria concedes the Liberals limited debate and introduced omnibus bills, but never of this magnitude with so many non-budgetary items larded into the legislation.
And both he and Franks point a finger at an opposition that has all but thrown its hands up in despair and done little to bring attention to this practice.
There is a tradition of push-back on bills like this:
In 1982, the Progressive Conservatives refused for 15 days to return to the Commons for a vote on a Liberal omnibus energy bill, letting the bells summoning MPs to the vote continue to ring.
In 1995, at Queen’s Park an omnibus bill introduced by Premier Mike Harris, whose caucus included a trio of Harper ministers today — Tony Clement, John Baird and Jim Flaherty.
That bill, a masterpiece of obfuscation, promised to radically alter the landscape of Ontario with its amendments to 40 different laws.
But opposition MPPs staged a sit-in, Harris relented and allowed three weeks of hearings and amended parts of the bill.
Then in 1994, an intervention by a Calgary Reform Party MP, railing against an omnibus Liberal budget implementation bill, fell on deaf ears.
“In the interest of democracy I ask: How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?’’ the MP said.
Stephen Harper did not win the day 18 years ago.
But today, as prime minister, he has become the undisputed king of the omnibus bill.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Tim Harper
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