David Wilks, the rookie MP for Kootney-Columbia, may be so back-bench he’s in danger of falling off, yet he already knows long careers in politics are not founded on further aggravating angry local voters. At a meeting in Revelstoke, he reportedly told people protesting against the omnibus budget bill that he would vote against C-38, if 12 other Conservatives voted alongside him.
Unfortunately, before you could say “career-limiting move” he was compelled to “clarify” his comments by saying he now supports the bill.
Still, it’s not hard to see why parliamentarians concerned about democratic process are upset about the budget bill.
C-38 is currently before the finance committee, which will perform the legislative equivalent of a lazy book review (that is, they’ll whiz through the summary and the table of contents before pronouncing that all is legal, honest, decent and truthful).
Yet as you remove the outer layers of the bill, you discover potentially far-reaching policy shifts that have no business being in any budget, far less being scrutinized by the finance committee.
To give just two example: the bill grants U.S. law enforcement agents the same power to enforce Canadian Acts of Parliament as members of the RCMP, if they are participating in integrated cross-border operations; it also disbands appeal tribunals covering Old Age Security, the Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance programs, terminating 1,000 federal government appointees, in order to replace them with a much smaller Social Security Tribunal.
These may or may not be great ideas but they are not getting much airtime amid the 60 or so other acts that are being amended in the stealth omnibus bill. This, of course, may be precisely the point.
The government is aware the prospect of Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arresting Canadians on their native soil is controversial.
“We recognized early that this approach could raise concerns about sovereignty, privacy and the civil liberties of Canadians,” RCMP superintendent Joe Oliver told the Senate committee on security and defence last week.
He was discussing the “baby steps” used to introduce the concept – namely, the Shiprider integrated cross-border maritime law enforcement project that has been in place since 2009.
The new amendments in the budget bill will broaden the scope to land operations, where the perimeter security agreement signed by Stephen Harper and Barack Obama envisages integrated teams operating in intelligence and criminal investigation.
There are already 15 integrated border enforcement teams operating along the 49th parallel but the legislative changes would allow the FBI or U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to pursue suspects onto Canadian soil. Embassy magazine reported this week that aerial police surveillance has not been ruled out.
The legislation doesn’t completely hand the farm over to the Americans – suspected criminals apprehended in Canada could not be removed to the U.S.
But this is a potentially momentous shift and, bar some comment from NDP MP Brian Masse, it has passed virtually unnoticed.
Another piece of legislation quietly nesting in the budget bill is the formation of a Social Security Tribunal. The bill is expansive on the make-up of the new tribunal but offers no explanation about the fate of the existing regime. In fact, there are currently four tribunals in which part-time government appointees hear appeals concerning OAS, CPP and EI eligibility. The Tories want to streamline that process by terminating the contracts of the 1,000 or so appointees and replacing them with 74 full-time appointed members. We know this only because appointees this week received letters telling them of the creation of a new “single-window” decision-making body and one of them contacted the National Post.
Future hearings will be done predominantly through written submissions and video-conferencing, rather than in-person hearings, to cut down on travel costs. This sounds fine in principle, unless you are the poor schmuck appealing to get early CPP on the basis of disability. How do you prove your case in writing or even on video? Furthermore, instead of three panel members, often comprising people with medical and legal experience, adjudication will now be made by one appointee.
Again, there may be merit to revamping social security tribunals. But the government has not made its case. It has simply used the “matryoshka principle” to nest legislation, layer within layer, in the hope that nobody notices the smallest dolls.
The Harperites customarily dismiss any and all opposition as being media generated, with no resonance outside the Ottawa bubble. But when your own members flirt with mutiny, you have to know you’ve touched a raw nerve.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: John Ivison
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