Here’s a thought. Suppose a provincial premier, threatened with a contempt vote for withholding documents from the legislature, were to respond by shutting the place down — indefinitely. And suppose, that same week, the federal government were to pack a pile of wholly unrelated legislation into a single bill, and demand Parliament pass the lot. Now suppose I told you these were not isolated or unusual events, but increasingly the norm.
That is perhaps what is most disturbing about the past week: how routine it has all become, how little outrage it arouses. When Dalton McGuinty, listing along at 20% in the polls and besieged by scandal, resigned as premier of Ontario, the news that he had also prorogued the legislature — thereby extinguishing a committee’s inquiry into his election-eve cancellation of two gas-fired electricity plants in swing ridings, at a cost to the taxpayer in the hundreds of millions — was buried below the fold in many accounts.
But then, McGuinty was only following what is rapidly becoming the template for governments in trouble. When Stephen Harper prorogued rather than face a confidence vote in 2008, it was shocking enough, even in light of the extraordinary circumstances of that vote. When, under fire over the treatment of Afghan detainees, he prorogued again the following year, it seemed he might have tripped the wire of public consciousness: the Conservatives plunged 10 points in the polls. But a little more than a year later he was re-elected with a majority.
The precedent, and the lesson, would not have been lost on McGuinty — much as Harper could find inspiration in Jean Chrétien’s earlier recourse to the same device. And so the virus spreads.
The Harper government’s omnibus bill, likewise, is hardly its first such effort: it was only last spring that the government presented Parliament with a similarly bloated package of legislation, then as now under the pretense of simply enacting “certain provisions of the budget.” The opposition protested, as no doubt it will protest now, but lacking the means to slow or block the bill’s passage — these defenses against abuse of power having been removed years ago — there is little they can do.
Public opinion might deter the Conservatives, but as the public has been educated by precedent not to care, it does not. Expect, then, to see more and larger omnibus bills, federal and provincial — as, indeed, Ontarians already have.
Now all of this would be alarming enough, if our legislatures were in robust good health to begin with. But then, if they were in good health — if the executive branch of government were truly accountable to the legislative, and the legislative properly mindful of its oversight role — none of this would be happening. In truth, parliamentary government in Canada has been in decline for many years, and at an accelerating pace; as each new power is eroded or prerogative overridden, a precedent is established and a defence is removed, to the point that, well, what point have we reached?
We should avoid exaggeration. But we should also be clear-eyed about how far things have deteriorated. What, after all, do we expect Parliaments to do? We expect them to examine and debate legislation. But debates are largely a formality — and the minute they threaten to become consequential, governments invoke closure (or its politer cousin, time allocation).
We expect them to hold governments to account for their actions. But what does this mean if governments can prorogue or dissolve the legislature whenever they come under fire?
We expect them to control the supply of public funds, and closely monitor how they are spent. But Parliament has long since loosened its grip on the public purse. Governments at all levels routinely overspend the amounts budgeted to them: by $82-billion in the last decade, according to the C. D. Howe Institute. Members on the government side, in particular, have come to see themselves as dispensers of public funds, rather than watchdogs over them.
Even that most basic of legislative functions, that of voting on legislation, is increasingly a charade. Such is the weight of party discipline that votes are almost always strictly party-line, making the results as predictable as the debates. And whatever use the process might serve is ground into dust under the omnibus juggernaut. Not only is it difficult to properly scrutinize so many disparate pieces of legislation in such a short time, but it makes it impossible to know what Parliament’s intent was. Did it really mean to give its assent to each and every item in the bill? Or was it, effectively, given no choice: pass the whole thing, or none of it, up or down?
What we are left with, in short, is a largely ceremonial body: the form of parliamentary government, but not the substance. The problem grows worse with each passing year, and with each passing year grows more difficult to reverse. By their actions this week, McGuinty and Harper have pushed us that much closer to the point of no return.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Andrew Coyne
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