Up front, I have to note that I worked as a committee staff member (specifically, I was an economist with the Parliamentary Research Branch of the Library of Parliament) from 1999 to 2005. In other words, I have no direct experience with the minority governments of Paul Martin and Stephen Harper. The fact that the dynamics of committees are different under a minority government – the government controls the chair but not a majority of committee members – and that the current government is actively working to undermine the committee process, means that some of my experiences will not be directly comparable to today’s situation.
That said, much of the mechanics of committee work remains unchanged. I hope that they will provide an overview of how committees work and a benchmark against which one can compare the current committee setup.
Onward, then…
If you’re fascinated by politics and interested in public policy, but would rather not outsource your higher brain functions to the Party, there is no better job in Ottawa than working for a parliamentary committee, which I did for six years. While Question Period is, unfortunately, the public face of Parliament, the actual legislative and public-policy work of Parliament happens in committees. It’s here that MPs and Senators study issues, hold hearings and review legislation. In order for any bill to get passed, be it new banking rules or anti-terrorism legislation, it has to be approved by the appropriate House and Senate committees, after hearing from witnesses and debating it (to what degree depends on the issue). As a non-partisan staff member, committee staffers have a front-row seat to the best show in town. As my old boss used to say, since you’re non-partisan, you get to be close enough to the action to see everything go down, but far enough away that when the bombs go off, you’re not hit by the shrapnel.
Interest groups – lobbyists, activists, think tanks and the like – pay attention to what’s going on in committees. And if these groups are paying attention, it probably means that the average citizen might be better served taking a gander at a boring regular committee meeting instead of being distracted by the freakshow that passes for Question Period.
While much of the lobbying that happens in Ottawa occurs behind the scenes, in meetings with civil servants and ministers, committee hearings offer Canadians the most transparent means of finding out who wants what and where the parties stand on various issues (for reasons I’ll got into in another post, committee members usually march in lockstep with the will of the party, which means the will of the Leader). Without committee hearings, we would be reduced to relying on unverifiable (and potentially untrustworthy) leaks to favoured journalists and press releases issued at the government’s discretion. In contrast, committee hearings on issues both profound and mundane give our elected representatives the chance to grill lobbyists and activists and to question the bureaucrats and ministers. And while committees don’t always get to the bottom of some issues, and while they can be thwarted when the members and parties do not act in good faith, they more often than not get the job done, away from the spotlight.
At their best, committees are dull and pedestrian and vitally important to the maintenance of our democracy. When it comes to recommending specific courses of action, you can be sure that MPs act like partisans – they do, after all, have very different, honestly held, views of what is best for Canada – but committee work (again, when everyone is working in good faith) also involves by necessity a degree of cooperation among the members of all parties. Committee chairs sometimes exert/abuse their power by ramming through certain things, and opposition members can be obstinate to the point of extreme annoyance, but at the end of the day everyone has to work together, requiring a certain base degree of civility.
In other words, it’s nothing at all like Question Period.
That’s the idealized version of committees, and it’s a credit to those involved that committees often (in my experience) live up to this ideal, usually when it involves what are seen as technical issues or in the rare case when all parties are in general agreement. In other cases, it’s been my experience that committee chairs often work to achieve some degree of consensus within their caucus and among opposition members, even if they don’t always get it.
There are problems as well, but not necessarily from the committee members themselves, most of whom are at the very least attentive to the concerns of their constituents. (I’m speaking of MPs. Senators aren't beholden to voters, and it often shows.) Instead, ever-increasing party control, the “friendly dictatorship” nature of majority governments, endemic understaffing and (under the current government) an active campaign to ensure that committees do not function well all prevent parliamentary committees from completely fulfilling their role as the public’s voice in the lawmaking process.
I’ll try to tackle those issues in later postings. Next up (tentatively, and hopefully within a week), a run-down of who’s actually on these committees.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The prorogation protests: What's next?
Nice to see so many Canadians out on the streets in the depths of January to protest prorogation. With any luck, this strong turnout will finally put to rest the idea that Facebook-based protests are inconsequential “slacktivism.” Facebook is a tool, just like the telephone: what matters is how people use it. Check out www.noprorogue.ca and click on the Local Info links to see how organized and effective decentralized organizing can get.
Reading the reports from my tiny apartment in Mexico City, the thing that caught my attention (other than the numbers) was NDP leader Jack Layton’s reminder that the NDP has called for legislation that would require a Prime Minister to put the decision to suspend Parliament to a vote in the House of Commons. With such a bill in place, a minority government, like Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, would have had to respect the will of the majority of MPs (and Canadians) when it comes to proroguing Parliament. Which is what, ultimately, these protests are all about.
Even the Liberals, who actually stand to gain from Harper’s expansion of executive power as the only party with a realistic shot at replacing the Conservatives, are getting in on the action. Michael Ignatieff earlier this week suggested that the prorogation controversy was all about “character,” and that what mattered is that we elect people who won’t abuse the rules. Pretty surprising, given his background in political science, really. Now, according to the Toronto Star (linked above), the Liberals are making noises about supporting some rule changes.
Going forward, we should be able to gauge how seriously Stephen Harper takes the opposition to prorogation by whether a version of the NDP proposal becomes law after Parliament is unlocked in March. In Parliament, government legislation takes priority over private-members’ bills, so without government support it can be quite hard to get a bill though Parliament, majority or minority.
If the protesters who came out on Saturday want to capitalize on the momentum and organizations they've created, they could do much worse than working to get such a bill passed. It wouldn't solve all our problems or do anything to curb abuses by majority governments, but it would be a start.
On that note, I had hoped by now to have a first post up on Parliamentary committees and how they work, but life – in the form of my parents coming to town and me showing them around – intervened. I should have something by the end of this week. But if you want a sneak peek of my overarching point, it’s that we should focus more on the rules rather than the personalities. The problems that we’ve seen with Parliament under Liberal and Conservative governments are fundamentally a matter of bad rules, not bad characters.
Update: Chantal Hébert points out correctly that nothing short of amending the Constitution would completely tie the hands of the Governor General and the Prime Minister. She argues that, like the fixed-election-date law, "Layton's legislation would likely be no more binding on the prime minister (or the governor general)." That said, Hébert's analysis is too narrow. The NDP proposal can also be seen as an attempt, like the Facebook protests, to increase the political price to be paid for ignoring the will of Parliament when it comes to prorogation. Think of it as focusing on the spirit of the law, not just the letter. In politics, this can be often be more useful than a constitutional amendment as a restraint on politicians seeking re-election.
Reading the reports from my tiny apartment in Mexico City, the thing that caught my attention (other than the numbers) was NDP leader Jack Layton’s reminder that the NDP has called for legislation that would require a Prime Minister to put the decision to suspend Parliament to a vote in the House of Commons. With such a bill in place, a minority government, like Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, would have had to respect the will of the majority of MPs (and Canadians) when it comes to proroguing Parliament. Which is what, ultimately, these protests are all about.
Even the Liberals, who actually stand to gain from Harper’s expansion of executive power as the only party with a realistic shot at replacing the Conservatives, are getting in on the action. Michael Ignatieff earlier this week suggested that the prorogation controversy was all about “character,” and that what mattered is that we elect people who won’t abuse the rules. Pretty surprising, given his background in political science, really. Now, according to the Toronto Star (linked above), the Liberals are making noises about supporting some rule changes.
Going forward, we should be able to gauge how seriously Stephen Harper takes the opposition to prorogation by whether a version of the NDP proposal becomes law after Parliament is unlocked in March. In Parliament, government legislation takes priority over private-members’ bills, so without government support it can be quite hard to get a bill though Parliament, majority or minority.
If the protesters who came out on Saturday want to capitalize on the momentum and organizations they've created, they could do much worse than working to get such a bill passed. It wouldn't solve all our problems or do anything to curb abuses by majority governments, but it would be a start.
On that note, I had hoped by now to have a first post up on Parliamentary committees and how they work, but life – in the form of my parents coming to town and me showing them around – intervened. I should have something by the end of this week. But if you want a sneak peek of my overarching point, it’s that we should focus more on the rules rather than the personalities. The problems that we’ve seen with Parliament under Liberal and Conservative governments are fundamentally a matter of bad rules, not bad characters.
Update: Chantal Hébert points out correctly that nothing short of amending the Constitution would completely tie the hands of the Governor General and the Prime Minister. She argues that, like the fixed-election-date law, "Layton's legislation would likely be no more binding on the prime minister (or the governor general)." That said, Hébert's analysis is too narrow. The NDP proposal can also be seen as an attempt, like the Facebook protests, to increase the political price to be paid for ignoring the will of Parliament when it comes to prorogation. Think of it as focusing on the spirit of the law, not just the letter. In politics, this can be often be more useful than a constitutional amendment as a restraint on politicians seeking re-election.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Facebook Activism, Redux
The blogosphere and pundits are all atwitter over the Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, trying to figure out what it means that over 80,000 people have signed up to this group in only a few days (it had only 20,000 members when I joined on Monday). Almost all of these comments have treated this group as if it were something novel.
It’s not, and the potential effectiveness of these groups has already been settled. Those of you interested in copyright might remember that in December 2007, a similar Facebook uprising panicked this same Conservative government was panicked into postponing its copyright reform legislation.
In Fall 2007, the Conservatives were preparing copyright legislation that would, among other things, implement what opponents have called, exaggerating somewhat, made-in-the-U.S. legislation. University of Ottawa Law professor Michael Geist starts up the Fair Copyright For Canada Facebook group to protest these measures and calling for public hearings into copyright reform. The group goes viral.
Based on Geist’s Facebook group’s suggestions, but with no central organization, members start sending letters to MPs and showing up at their offices. My favourite was the Kemptom Lam-organized meetup at then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s riding’s Christmas party, where they “respectfully” (as Lam told me) presented their concerns. Lam’s account of the party, and Facebook activism, here, is basically a how-to to use Facebook politically.
MPs, faced with actual live voters concerned about an esoteric issue like copyright, panic, since they (and the government) have no idea how deep this groundswell goes.
The government, facing tough votes on Afghanistan and still unsure of how weak the Liberal opposition is (eventual answer: quite), decides that discretion is the better part of valour and tables the legislation until June 2008. This delay is enough to sink the legislation permanently when an election is called a few months later. Furthermore, public hearings into copyright reform, the group’s main demand, were held in the summer of 2009.
The Great Copyright Facebook Uprising of 2007 succeeded in affecting government policy. Its success was due to several factors, some of which may be difficult to replicate this time around.
Who are these people? The first lesson from the copyright debate is that if people are signing up to support an issue that the week before they didn’t even know existed, then politicians should pay attention. That over 60,000 people are members of Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament demonstrates that Canadians, despite what MPs and pundits have claimed, are worried about what the suspension of Parliament means for our democracy. This is no small achievement.
What are their tactics?
Politicians are susceptible to old-school means of communication, like letters, meetings at MP’s offices, and protests. Facebook, as many have observed, is most potent as a means of organizing locally people who otherwise would never have been able to get together, while maintaining national linkages. This is exactly what happened with copyright. I would be surprised if the most active people on the Proroguing Parliament group didn’t know this and act accordingly.
The patronizing dismissal of these groups, in both cases, as unrepresentative of average Canadians is beside the point. Politics is a game of activists, and if people are concerned enough to visit their MP’s office, they’re probably concerned enough to vote. While MPs have yet to develop a rule of thumb like they have with snail mail as to the number of voters represented by every Facebook joiner, these joiners certainly represent voters. This alone makes Facebook groups important.
What are their goals?
The copyright activists were criticized for not being specific in their demands: after all, who could object to “fair” copyright? However, Geist’s call for “fair copyright” avoided a potential schism among copyright reformers by simply calling for Canadians to be heard in the debate. It also had the benefit of being realistic.
Calling on MPs to “get back to work,” especially in the middle of hard economic times, is a stroke of genius. It may not actually get MPs back to work, but if it makes it more politically difficult for a Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament in the future, then it will have done some real good for the country.
What are the ground rules?
This is likely to be the most difficult part for Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament to come to terms with and also shows the difference between protesting legislation and confronting institutional problems.
Copyright activists were able to delay the copyright legislation by taking advantage of the fact that, with a relatively weak minority government that depended on opposition members for support, MPs could be threatened with defeat should they defy the popular will.
Effective political pressure of the type deployed by copyright activists has a wonderful way of focusing a politician’s mind. While Conservative MPs are unlikely to be swayed by any current protests, the other parties may be tempted to score partisan points off Stephen Harper, portraying him as an undemocratic dictator-lite.
This will be useful as far as it goes, even if it leaves unaddressed the fundamental problem that our parliamentary rules allow any Prime Minister to ignore the will of Parliament; it’s just more obvious in a minority situation. Unfortunately, there still seems to be little appetite for real parliamentary or electoral reform, in the country and among the political parties.
Like those in the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament benefits from strong, passionate interest, and has the ability to translate this strength into on-the-ground pressure on MPs. Unlike the copyright fight, these newest Facebook activists have little leverage over Conservative MPs, and only superficial leverage over Liberals, who will benefit from Harper’s expansion of executive power once they return to the throne. As a result, they face an uphill battle to get Parliament to reconvene on January 25.
With luck, this current Facebook uprising will finally put to rest the question of whether Facebook groups can matter politically. Of course they can, but it depends on the skill of those using them. Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament have all the tools they need to be heard; all they have to do is use them. If they raise the political cost to future governments of suspending Parliament arbitrarily, they will have achieved something real.
It’s not, and the potential effectiveness of these groups has already been settled. Those of you interested in copyright might remember that in December 2007, a similar Facebook uprising panicked this same Conservative government was panicked into postponing its copyright reform legislation.
In Fall 2007, the Conservatives were preparing copyright legislation that would, among other things, implement what opponents have called, exaggerating somewhat, made-in-the-U.S. legislation. University of Ottawa Law professor Michael Geist starts up the Fair Copyright For Canada Facebook group to protest these measures and calling for public hearings into copyright reform. The group goes viral.
Based on Geist’s Facebook group’s suggestions, but with no central organization, members start sending letters to MPs and showing up at their offices. My favourite was the Kemptom Lam-organized meetup at then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s riding’s Christmas party, where they “respectfully” (as Lam told me) presented their concerns. Lam’s account of the party, and Facebook activism, here, is basically a how-to to use Facebook politically.
MPs, faced with actual live voters concerned about an esoteric issue like copyright, panic, since they (and the government) have no idea how deep this groundswell goes.
The government, facing tough votes on Afghanistan and still unsure of how weak the Liberal opposition is (eventual answer: quite), decides that discretion is the better part of valour and tables the legislation until June 2008. This delay is enough to sink the legislation permanently when an election is called a few months later. Furthermore, public hearings into copyright reform, the group’s main demand, were held in the summer of 2009.
The Great Copyright Facebook Uprising of 2007 succeeded in affecting government policy. Its success was due to several factors, some of which may be difficult to replicate this time around.
Who are these people? The first lesson from the copyright debate is that if people are signing up to support an issue that the week before they didn’t even know existed, then politicians should pay attention. That over 60,000 people are members of Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament demonstrates that Canadians, despite what MPs and pundits have claimed, are worried about what the suspension of Parliament means for our democracy. This is no small achievement.
What are their tactics?
Politicians are susceptible to old-school means of communication, like letters, meetings at MP’s offices, and protests. Facebook, as many have observed, is most potent as a means of organizing locally people who otherwise would never have been able to get together, while maintaining national linkages. This is exactly what happened with copyright. I would be surprised if the most active people on the Proroguing Parliament group didn’t know this and act accordingly.
The patronizing dismissal of these groups, in both cases, as unrepresentative of average Canadians is beside the point. Politics is a game of activists, and if people are concerned enough to visit their MP’s office, they’re probably concerned enough to vote. While MPs have yet to develop a rule of thumb like they have with snail mail as to the number of voters represented by every Facebook joiner, these joiners certainly represent voters. This alone makes Facebook groups important.
What are their goals?
The copyright activists were criticized for not being specific in their demands: after all, who could object to “fair” copyright? However, Geist’s call for “fair copyright” avoided a potential schism among copyright reformers by simply calling for Canadians to be heard in the debate. It also had the benefit of being realistic.
Calling on MPs to “get back to work,” especially in the middle of hard economic times, is a stroke of genius. It may not actually get MPs back to work, but if it makes it more politically difficult for a Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament in the future, then it will have done some real good for the country.
What are the ground rules?
This is likely to be the most difficult part for Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament to come to terms with and also shows the difference between protesting legislation and confronting institutional problems.
Copyright activists were able to delay the copyright legislation by taking advantage of the fact that, with a relatively weak minority government that depended on opposition members for support, MPs could be threatened with defeat should they defy the popular will.
Effective political pressure of the type deployed by copyright activists has a wonderful way of focusing a politician’s mind. While Conservative MPs are unlikely to be swayed by any current protests, the other parties may be tempted to score partisan points off Stephen Harper, portraying him as an undemocratic dictator-lite.
This will be useful as far as it goes, even if it leaves unaddressed the fundamental problem that our parliamentary rules allow any Prime Minister to ignore the will of Parliament; it’s just more obvious in a minority situation. Unfortunately, there still seems to be little appetite for real parliamentary or electoral reform, in the country and among the political parties.
Like those in the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament benefits from strong, passionate interest, and has the ability to translate this strength into on-the-ground pressure on MPs. Unlike the copyright fight, these newest Facebook activists have little leverage over Conservative MPs, and only superficial leverage over Liberals, who will benefit from Harper’s expansion of executive power once they return to the throne. As a result, they face an uphill battle to get Parliament to reconvene on January 25.
With luck, this current Facebook uprising will finally put to rest the question of whether Facebook groups can matter politically. Of course they can, but it depends on the skill of those using them. Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament have all the tools they need to be heard; all they have to do is use them. If they raise the political cost to future governments of suspending Parliament arbitrarily, they will have achieved something real.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The suspension of Parliament: What’s at stake, and an announcement
It’s been heartening to see the beginnings of some grassroots opposition to Stephen Harper’s decision to suspend Parliament rather than face tough questions about Afghan detainees from the opposition. Hopefully, the 185,000-plus people signed up for the Facebook page Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament (disclosure: I’ve joined the group) will put the lie to the claim that Canadians don’t care about prorogation.
The most common criticism of these Facebook groups is that they’re all talk, no action, so it’ll be interesting to see what effect, if any, the protests scheduled for this Sunday have on the political process.
But, as Susan Delacourt asks: where will this influence have an effect?
To accomplish anything worthwhile, you have to go through the political parties. However, at the moment they don’t really see any problem with the current electoral system – and it’s important to remember that, as Donald Savoie points out in Lawrence Martin’s column this morning, this is a systemic problem, not a partisan one. Even if the opposition parties get on board with the protests – and dramatic shifts in public opinion have a way of focusing politicians’ minds – and the Conservatives “get back to work,” that will do nothing to fix the underlying problem that got us into this mess.
The key point is this: convention, respect for tradition and commonly held views of what is acceptable behavour are the only things that have ever kept any Prime Minister who commands support from his caucus (and his tools for maintaining this control are themselves quite vast) from attempting what this Prime Minister is well on his way toward getting away with. Unlike the U.S. system, the Canadian system of government is relatively unconstrained by formal checks and balances.
Heat v. Light
It’s very easy for debates like these to degenerate into fact-free partisan name-calling à la Globe and Mail comments sections. This is why I think it is important to stress that while Stephen Harper bears full responsibility for thumbing his nose at Parliament, which in our system represents the will of Canadians, I’m under no illusions that Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton (were the NDP to become a credible alternative to form a government) would have acted much differently.
As my tiny contribution to the debate, rather than go on about how fascist the Conservatives are, how we should just throw the bums out or how all politicians are dishonest liars, I’m going to try something a little different. Since the problem is not with our politicians (surprise! They’re humans), but with what our parliamentary system permits them to do, I’m going to try to generate a bit of light by talking about Parliamentary committees.
Still awake? Great.
Committees are an absolutely crucial, if poorly understood, part of our political system. They provide the only way for our elected representatives to evaluate publicly laws and regulations that would otherwise be set exclusively by the governing party and the bureaucracy. Absent good faith, the committee process cannot function. This was a problem (though less so) under the Liberals and will only get worse over time, unless checked at the ballot box or through electoral or parliamentary reform.
As it has with Parliament itself, Harper’s Conservative government has worked to undermine parliamentary committee work, through Conservative MPs’ refusal to show up at key meetings and by working actively and systematically to thwart committee hearings. Examining how committees work will, I hope, shed some light on the larger problem of the increasing lack of accountability to parliament. Over the next few months I’ll discuss the reality that while the Conservatives’ actions are deplorable and, in some cases, more extreme than we have seen before, they are not without precedent.
As an economist with the Library of Parliament, I was a (non-partisan) staff member for several parliamentary committees, including the House Finance Committee and Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, from 1999-2005 (I was on an unpaid educational leave from the Library from 2005 to last March). It was a great job that gave me had a front-row seat to this key part of our lawmaking process.
I also hope that my discussion of the ins and outs of how parliamentary committees work, while not the most exciting topic in the blogosphere (Go Coco!), will be useful to anyone who wants to understand how our parliamentary system works, its benefits and drawbacks. Most of all, I hope that it will help contribute to a rational, respectful dialogue on how to reform our current political system.
This will be an irregular series, since I want to finish my dissertation before the end of the century. That said, how Canadian copyright policy is made is not completely unrelated to the quality of our parliamentary democracy.
First substantive post coming soon. Let’s see how this goes.
The most common criticism of these Facebook groups is that they’re all talk, no action, so it’ll be interesting to see what effect, if any, the protests scheduled for this Sunday have on the political process.
But, as Susan Delacourt asks: where will this influence have an effect?
To accomplish anything worthwhile, you have to go through the political parties. However, at the moment they don’t really see any problem with the current electoral system – and it’s important to remember that, as Donald Savoie points out in Lawrence Martin’s column this morning, this is a systemic problem, not a partisan one. Even if the opposition parties get on board with the protests – and dramatic shifts in public opinion have a way of focusing politicians’ minds – and the Conservatives “get back to work,” that will do nothing to fix the underlying problem that got us into this mess.
The key point is this: convention, respect for tradition and commonly held views of what is acceptable behavour are the only things that have ever kept any Prime Minister who commands support from his caucus (and his tools for maintaining this control are themselves quite vast) from attempting what this Prime Minister is well on his way toward getting away with. Unlike the U.S. system, the Canadian system of government is relatively unconstrained by formal checks and balances.
Heat v. Light
It’s very easy for debates like these to degenerate into fact-free partisan name-calling à la Globe and Mail comments sections. This is why I think it is important to stress that while Stephen Harper bears full responsibility for thumbing his nose at Parliament, which in our system represents the will of Canadians, I’m under no illusions that Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton (were the NDP to become a credible alternative to form a government) would have acted much differently.
As my tiny contribution to the debate, rather than go on about how fascist the Conservatives are, how we should just throw the bums out or how all politicians are dishonest liars, I’m going to try something a little different. Since the problem is not with our politicians (surprise! They’re humans), but with what our parliamentary system permits them to do, I’m going to try to generate a bit of light by talking about Parliamentary committees.
Still awake? Great.
Committees are an absolutely crucial, if poorly understood, part of our political system. They provide the only way for our elected representatives to evaluate publicly laws and regulations that would otherwise be set exclusively by the governing party and the bureaucracy. Absent good faith, the committee process cannot function. This was a problem (though less so) under the Liberals and will only get worse over time, unless checked at the ballot box or through electoral or parliamentary reform.
As it has with Parliament itself, Harper’s Conservative government has worked to undermine parliamentary committee work, through Conservative MPs’ refusal to show up at key meetings and by working actively and systematically to thwart committee hearings. Examining how committees work will, I hope, shed some light on the larger problem of the increasing lack of accountability to parliament. Over the next few months I’ll discuss the reality that while the Conservatives’ actions are deplorable and, in some cases, more extreme than we have seen before, they are not without precedent.
As an economist with the Library of Parliament, I was a (non-partisan) staff member for several parliamentary committees, including the House Finance Committee and Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, from 1999-2005 (I was on an unpaid educational leave from the Library from 2005 to last March). It was a great job that gave me had a front-row seat to this key part of our lawmaking process.
I also hope that my discussion of the ins and outs of how parliamentary committees work, while not the most exciting topic in the blogosphere (Go Coco!), will be useful to anyone who wants to understand how our parliamentary system works, its benefits and drawbacks. Most of all, I hope that it will help contribute to a rational, respectful dialogue on how to reform our current political system.
This will be an irregular series, since I want to finish my dissertation before the end of the century. That said, how Canadian copyright policy is made is not completely unrelated to the quality of our parliamentary democracy.
First substantive post coming soon. Let’s see how this goes.
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Sunday, January 31, 2010
Parliamentary Committees I: The (mostly) civilized polar opposite of Question Period
Up front, I have to note that I worked as a committee staff member (specifically, I was an economist with the Parliamentary Research Branch of the Library of Parliament) from 1999 to 2005. In other words, I have no direct experience with the minority governments of Paul Martin and Stephen Harper. The fact that the dynamics of committees are different under a minority government – the government controls the chair but not a majority of committee members – and that the current government is actively working to undermine the committee process, means that some of my experiences will not be directly comparable to today’s situation.
That said, much of the mechanics of committee work remains unchanged. I hope that they will provide an overview of how committees work and a benchmark against which one can compare the current committee setup.
Onward, then…
If you’re fascinated by politics and interested in public policy, but would rather not outsource your higher brain functions to the Party, there is no better job in Ottawa than working for a parliamentary committee, which I did for six years. While Question Period is, unfortunately, the public face of Parliament, the actual legislative and public-policy work of Parliament happens in committees. It’s here that MPs and Senators study issues, hold hearings and review legislation. In order for any bill to get passed, be it new banking rules or anti-terrorism legislation, it has to be approved by the appropriate House and Senate committees, after hearing from witnesses and debating it (to what degree depends on the issue). As a non-partisan staff member, committee staffers have a front-row seat to the best show in town. As my old boss used to say, since you’re non-partisan, you get to be close enough to the action to see everything go down, but far enough away that when the bombs go off, you’re not hit by the shrapnel.
Interest groups – lobbyists, activists, think tanks and the like – pay attention to what’s going on in committees. And if these groups are paying attention, it probably means that the average citizen might be better served taking a gander at a boring regular committee meeting instead of being distracted by the freakshow that passes for Question Period.
While much of the lobbying that happens in Ottawa occurs behind the scenes, in meetings with civil servants and ministers, committee hearings offer Canadians the most transparent means of finding out who wants what and where the parties stand on various issues (for reasons I’ll got into in another post, committee members usually march in lockstep with the will of the party, which means the will of the Leader). Without committee hearings, we would be reduced to relying on unverifiable (and potentially untrustworthy) leaks to favoured journalists and press releases issued at the government’s discretion. In contrast, committee hearings on issues both profound and mundane give our elected representatives the chance to grill lobbyists and activists and to question the bureaucrats and ministers. And while committees don’t always get to the bottom of some issues, and while they can be thwarted when the members and parties do not act in good faith, they more often than not get the job done, away from the spotlight.
At their best, committees are dull and pedestrian and vitally important to the maintenance of our democracy. When it comes to recommending specific courses of action, you can be sure that MPs act like partisans – they do, after all, have very different, honestly held, views of what is best for Canada – but committee work (again, when everyone is working in good faith) also involves by necessity a degree of cooperation among the members of all parties. Committee chairs sometimes exert/abuse their power by ramming through certain things, and opposition members can be obstinate to the point of extreme annoyance, but at the end of the day everyone has to work together, requiring a certain base degree of civility.
In other words, it’s nothing at all like Question Period.
That’s the idealized version of committees, and it’s a credit to those involved that committees often (in my experience) live up to this ideal, usually when it involves what are seen as technical issues or in the rare case when all parties are in general agreement. In other cases, it’s been my experience that committee chairs often work to achieve some degree of consensus within their caucus and among opposition members, even if they don’t always get it.
There are problems as well, but not necessarily from the committee members themselves, most of whom are at the very least attentive to the concerns of their constituents. (I’m speaking of MPs. Senators aren't beholden to voters, and it often shows.) Instead, ever-increasing party control, the “friendly dictatorship” nature of majority governments, endemic understaffing and (under the current government) an active campaign to ensure that committees do not function well all prevent parliamentary committees from completely fulfilling their role as the public’s voice in the lawmaking process.
I’ll try to tackle those issues in later postings. Next up (tentatively, and hopefully within a week), a run-down of who’s actually on these committees.
That said, much of the mechanics of committee work remains unchanged. I hope that they will provide an overview of how committees work and a benchmark against which one can compare the current committee setup.
Onward, then…
If you’re fascinated by politics and interested in public policy, but would rather not outsource your higher brain functions to the Party, there is no better job in Ottawa than working for a parliamentary committee, which I did for six years. While Question Period is, unfortunately, the public face of Parliament, the actual legislative and public-policy work of Parliament happens in committees. It’s here that MPs and Senators study issues, hold hearings and review legislation. In order for any bill to get passed, be it new banking rules or anti-terrorism legislation, it has to be approved by the appropriate House and Senate committees, after hearing from witnesses and debating it (to what degree depends on the issue). As a non-partisan staff member, committee staffers have a front-row seat to the best show in town. As my old boss used to say, since you’re non-partisan, you get to be close enough to the action to see everything go down, but far enough away that when the bombs go off, you’re not hit by the shrapnel.
Interest groups – lobbyists, activists, think tanks and the like – pay attention to what’s going on in committees. And if these groups are paying attention, it probably means that the average citizen might be better served taking a gander at a boring regular committee meeting instead of being distracted by the freakshow that passes for Question Period.
While much of the lobbying that happens in Ottawa occurs behind the scenes, in meetings with civil servants and ministers, committee hearings offer Canadians the most transparent means of finding out who wants what and where the parties stand on various issues (for reasons I’ll got into in another post, committee members usually march in lockstep with the will of the party, which means the will of the Leader). Without committee hearings, we would be reduced to relying on unverifiable (and potentially untrustworthy) leaks to favoured journalists and press releases issued at the government’s discretion. In contrast, committee hearings on issues both profound and mundane give our elected representatives the chance to grill lobbyists and activists and to question the bureaucrats and ministers. And while committees don’t always get to the bottom of some issues, and while they can be thwarted when the members and parties do not act in good faith, they more often than not get the job done, away from the spotlight.
At their best, committees are dull and pedestrian and vitally important to the maintenance of our democracy. When it comes to recommending specific courses of action, you can be sure that MPs act like partisans – they do, after all, have very different, honestly held, views of what is best for Canada – but committee work (again, when everyone is working in good faith) also involves by necessity a degree of cooperation among the members of all parties. Committee chairs sometimes exert/abuse their power by ramming through certain things, and opposition members can be obstinate to the point of extreme annoyance, but at the end of the day everyone has to work together, requiring a certain base degree of civility.
In other words, it’s nothing at all like Question Period.
That’s the idealized version of committees, and it’s a credit to those involved that committees often (in my experience) live up to this ideal, usually when it involves what are seen as technical issues or in the rare case when all parties are in general agreement. In other cases, it’s been my experience that committee chairs often work to achieve some degree of consensus within their caucus and among opposition members, even if they don’t always get it.
There are problems as well, but not necessarily from the committee members themselves, most of whom are at the very least attentive to the concerns of their constituents. (I’m speaking of MPs. Senators aren't beholden to voters, and it often shows.) Instead, ever-increasing party control, the “friendly dictatorship” nature of majority governments, endemic understaffing and (under the current government) an active campaign to ensure that committees do not function well all prevent parliamentary committees from completely fulfilling their role as the public’s voice in the lawmaking process.
I’ll try to tackle those issues in later postings. Next up (tentatively, and hopefully within a week), a run-down of who’s actually on these committees.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The prorogation protests: What's next?
Nice to see so many Canadians out on the streets in the depths of January to protest prorogation. With any luck, this strong turnout will finally put to rest the idea that Facebook-based protests are inconsequential “slacktivism.” Facebook is a tool, just like the telephone: what matters is how people use it. Check out www.noprorogue.ca and click on the Local Info links to see how organized and effective decentralized organizing can get.
Reading the reports from my tiny apartment in Mexico City, the thing that caught my attention (other than the numbers) was NDP leader Jack Layton’s reminder that the NDP has called for legislation that would require a Prime Minister to put the decision to suspend Parliament to a vote in the House of Commons. With such a bill in place, a minority government, like Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, would have had to respect the will of the majority of MPs (and Canadians) when it comes to proroguing Parliament. Which is what, ultimately, these protests are all about.
Even the Liberals, who actually stand to gain from Harper’s expansion of executive power as the only party with a realistic shot at replacing the Conservatives, are getting in on the action. Michael Ignatieff earlier this week suggested that the prorogation controversy was all about “character,” and that what mattered is that we elect people who won’t abuse the rules. Pretty surprising, given his background in political science, really. Now, according to the Toronto Star (linked above), the Liberals are making noises about supporting some rule changes.
Going forward, we should be able to gauge how seriously Stephen Harper takes the opposition to prorogation by whether a version of the NDP proposal becomes law after Parliament is unlocked in March. In Parliament, government legislation takes priority over private-members’ bills, so without government support it can be quite hard to get a bill though Parliament, majority or minority.
If the protesters who came out on Saturday want to capitalize on the momentum and organizations they've created, they could do much worse than working to get such a bill passed. It wouldn't solve all our problems or do anything to curb abuses by majority governments, but it would be a start.
On that note, I had hoped by now to have a first post up on Parliamentary committees and how they work, but life – in the form of my parents coming to town and me showing them around – intervened. I should have something by the end of this week. But if you want a sneak peek of my overarching point, it’s that we should focus more on the rules rather than the personalities. The problems that we’ve seen with Parliament under Liberal and Conservative governments are fundamentally a matter of bad rules, not bad characters.
Update: Chantal Hébert points out correctly that nothing short of amending the Constitution would completely tie the hands of the Governor General and the Prime Minister. She argues that, like the fixed-election-date law, "Layton's legislation would likely be no more binding on the prime minister (or the governor general)." That said, Hébert's analysis is too narrow. The NDP proposal can also be seen as an attempt, like the Facebook protests, to increase the political price to be paid for ignoring the will of Parliament when it comes to prorogation. Think of it as focusing on the spirit of the law, not just the letter. In politics, this can be often be more useful than a constitutional amendment as a restraint on politicians seeking re-election.
Reading the reports from my tiny apartment in Mexico City, the thing that caught my attention (other than the numbers) was NDP leader Jack Layton’s reminder that the NDP has called for legislation that would require a Prime Minister to put the decision to suspend Parliament to a vote in the House of Commons. With such a bill in place, a minority government, like Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, would have had to respect the will of the majority of MPs (and Canadians) when it comes to proroguing Parliament. Which is what, ultimately, these protests are all about.
Even the Liberals, who actually stand to gain from Harper’s expansion of executive power as the only party with a realistic shot at replacing the Conservatives, are getting in on the action. Michael Ignatieff earlier this week suggested that the prorogation controversy was all about “character,” and that what mattered is that we elect people who won’t abuse the rules. Pretty surprising, given his background in political science, really. Now, according to the Toronto Star (linked above), the Liberals are making noises about supporting some rule changes.
Going forward, we should be able to gauge how seriously Stephen Harper takes the opposition to prorogation by whether a version of the NDP proposal becomes law after Parliament is unlocked in March. In Parliament, government legislation takes priority over private-members’ bills, so without government support it can be quite hard to get a bill though Parliament, majority or minority.
If the protesters who came out on Saturday want to capitalize on the momentum and organizations they've created, they could do much worse than working to get such a bill passed. It wouldn't solve all our problems or do anything to curb abuses by majority governments, but it would be a start.
On that note, I had hoped by now to have a first post up on Parliamentary committees and how they work, but life – in the form of my parents coming to town and me showing them around – intervened. I should have something by the end of this week. But if you want a sneak peek of my overarching point, it’s that we should focus more on the rules rather than the personalities. The problems that we’ve seen with Parliament under Liberal and Conservative governments are fundamentally a matter of bad rules, not bad characters.
Update: Chantal Hébert points out correctly that nothing short of amending the Constitution would completely tie the hands of the Governor General and the Prime Minister. She argues that, like the fixed-election-date law, "Layton's legislation would likely be no more binding on the prime minister (or the governor general)." That said, Hébert's analysis is too narrow. The NDP proposal can also be seen as an attempt, like the Facebook protests, to increase the political price to be paid for ignoring the will of Parliament when it comes to prorogation. Think of it as focusing on the spirit of the law, not just the letter. In politics, this can be often be more useful than a constitutional amendment as a restraint on politicians seeking re-election.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Facebook Activism, Redux
The blogosphere and pundits are all atwitter over the Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, trying to figure out what it means that over 80,000 people have signed up to this group in only a few days (it had only 20,000 members when I joined on Monday). Almost all of these comments have treated this group as if it were something novel.
It’s not, and the potential effectiveness of these groups has already been settled. Those of you interested in copyright might remember that in December 2007, a similar Facebook uprising panicked this same Conservative government was panicked into postponing its copyright reform legislation.
In Fall 2007, the Conservatives were preparing copyright legislation that would, among other things, implement what opponents have called, exaggerating somewhat, made-in-the-U.S. legislation. University of Ottawa Law professor Michael Geist starts up the Fair Copyright For Canada Facebook group to protest these measures and calling for public hearings into copyright reform. The group goes viral.
Based on Geist’s Facebook group’s suggestions, but with no central organization, members start sending letters to MPs and showing up at their offices. My favourite was the Kemptom Lam-organized meetup at then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s riding’s Christmas party, where they “respectfully” (as Lam told me) presented their concerns. Lam’s account of the party, and Facebook activism, here, is basically a how-to to use Facebook politically.
MPs, faced with actual live voters concerned about an esoteric issue like copyright, panic, since they (and the government) have no idea how deep this groundswell goes.
The government, facing tough votes on Afghanistan and still unsure of how weak the Liberal opposition is (eventual answer: quite), decides that discretion is the better part of valour and tables the legislation until June 2008. This delay is enough to sink the legislation permanently when an election is called a few months later. Furthermore, public hearings into copyright reform, the group’s main demand, were held in the summer of 2009.
The Great Copyright Facebook Uprising of 2007 succeeded in affecting government policy. Its success was due to several factors, some of which may be difficult to replicate this time around.
Who are these people? The first lesson from the copyright debate is that if people are signing up to support an issue that the week before they didn’t even know existed, then politicians should pay attention. That over 60,000 people are members of Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament demonstrates that Canadians, despite what MPs and pundits have claimed, are worried about what the suspension of Parliament means for our democracy. This is no small achievement.
What are their tactics?
Politicians are susceptible to old-school means of communication, like letters, meetings at MP’s offices, and protests. Facebook, as many have observed, is most potent as a means of organizing locally people who otherwise would never have been able to get together, while maintaining national linkages. This is exactly what happened with copyright. I would be surprised if the most active people on the Proroguing Parliament group didn’t know this and act accordingly.
The patronizing dismissal of these groups, in both cases, as unrepresentative of average Canadians is beside the point. Politics is a game of activists, and if people are concerned enough to visit their MP’s office, they’re probably concerned enough to vote. While MPs have yet to develop a rule of thumb like they have with snail mail as to the number of voters represented by every Facebook joiner, these joiners certainly represent voters. This alone makes Facebook groups important.
What are their goals?
The copyright activists were criticized for not being specific in their demands: after all, who could object to “fair” copyright? However, Geist’s call for “fair copyright” avoided a potential schism among copyright reformers by simply calling for Canadians to be heard in the debate. It also had the benefit of being realistic.
Calling on MPs to “get back to work,” especially in the middle of hard economic times, is a stroke of genius. It may not actually get MPs back to work, but if it makes it more politically difficult for a Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament in the future, then it will have done some real good for the country.
What are the ground rules?
This is likely to be the most difficult part for Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament to come to terms with and also shows the difference between protesting legislation and confronting institutional problems.
Copyright activists were able to delay the copyright legislation by taking advantage of the fact that, with a relatively weak minority government that depended on opposition members for support, MPs could be threatened with defeat should they defy the popular will.
Effective political pressure of the type deployed by copyright activists has a wonderful way of focusing a politician’s mind. While Conservative MPs are unlikely to be swayed by any current protests, the other parties may be tempted to score partisan points off Stephen Harper, portraying him as an undemocratic dictator-lite.
This will be useful as far as it goes, even if it leaves unaddressed the fundamental problem that our parliamentary rules allow any Prime Minister to ignore the will of Parliament; it’s just more obvious in a minority situation. Unfortunately, there still seems to be little appetite for real parliamentary or electoral reform, in the country and among the political parties.
Like those in the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament benefits from strong, passionate interest, and has the ability to translate this strength into on-the-ground pressure on MPs. Unlike the copyright fight, these newest Facebook activists have little leverage over Conservative MPs, and only superficial leverage over Liberals, who will benefit from Harper’s expansion of executive power once they return to the throne. As a result, they face an uphill battle to get Parliament to reconvene on January 25.
With luck, this current Facebook uprising will finally put to rest the question of whether Facebook groups can matter politically. Of course they can, but it depends on the skill of those using them. Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament have all the tools they need to be heard; all they have to do is use them. If they raise the political cost to future governments of suspending Parliament arbitrarily, they will have achieved something real.
It’s not, and the potential effectiveness of these groups has already been settled. Those of you interested in copyright might remember that in December 2007, a similar Facebook uprising panicked this same Conservative government was panicked into postponing its copyright reform legislation.
In Fall 2007, the Conservatives were preparing copyright legislation that would, among other things, implement what opponents have called, exaggerating somewhat, made-in-the-U.S. legislation. University of Ottawa Law professor Michael Geist starts up the Fair Copyright For Canada Facebook group to protest these measures and calling for public hearings into copyright reform. The group goes viral.
Based on Geist’s Facebook group’s suggestions, but with no central organization, members start sending letters to MPs and showing up at their offices. My favourite was the Kemptom Lam-organized meetup at then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s riding’s Christmas party, where they “respectfully” (as Lam told me) presented their concerns. Lam’s account of the party, and Facebook activism, here, is basically a how-to to use Facebook politically.
MPs, faced with actual live voters concerned about an esoteric issue like copyright, panic, since they (and the government) have no idea how deep this groundswell goes.
The government, facing tough votes on Afghanistan and still unsure of how weak the Liberal opposition is (eventual answer: quite), decides that discretion is the better part of valour and tables the legislation until June 2008. This delay is enough to sink the legislation permanently when an election is called a few months later. Furthermore, public hearings into copyright reform, the group’s main demand, were held in the summer of 2009.
The Great Copyright Facebook Uprising of 2007 succeeded in affecting government policy. Its success was due to several factors, some of which may be difficult to replicate this time around.
Who are these people? The first lesson from the copyright debate is that if people are signing up to support an issue that the week before they didn’t even know existed, then politicians should pay attention. That over 60,000 people are members of Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament demonstrates that Canadians, despite what MPs and pundits have claimed, are worried about what the suspension of Parliament means for our democracy. This is no small achievement.
What are their tactics?
Politicians are susceptible to old-school means of communication, like letters, meetings at MP’s offices, and protests. Facebook, as many have observed, is most potent as a means of organizing locally people who otherwise would never have been able to get together, while maintaining national linkages. This is exactly what happened with copyright. I would be surprised if the most active people on the Proroguing Parliament group didn’t know this and act accordingly.
The patronizing dismissal of these groups, in both cases, as unrepresentative of average Canadians is beside the point. Politics is a game of activists, and if people are concerned enough to visit their MP’s office, they’re probably concerned enough to vote. While MPs have yet to develop a rule of thumb like they have with snail mail as to the number of voters represented by every Facebook joiner, these joiners certainly represent voters. This alone makes Facebook groups important.
What are their goals?
The copyright activists were criticized for not being specific in their demands: after all, who could object to “fair” copyright? However, Geist’s call for “fair copyright” avoided a potential schism among copyright reformers by simply calling for Canadians to be heard in the debate. It also had the benefit of being realistic.
Calling on MPs to “get back to work,” especially in the middle of hard economic times, is a stroke of genius. It may not actually get MPs back to work, but if it makes it more politically difficult for a Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament in the future, then it will have done some real good for the country.
What are the ground rules?
This is likely to be the most difficult part for Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament to come to terms with and also shows the difference between protesting legislation and confronting institutional problems.
Copyright activists were able to delay the copyright legislation by taking advantage of the fact that, with a relatively weak minority government that depended on opposition members for support, MPs could be threatened with defeat should they defy the popular will.
Effective political pressure of the type deployed by copyright activists has a wonderful way of focusing a politician’s mind. While Conservative MPs are unlikely to be swayed by any current protests, the other parties may be tempted to score partisan points off Stephen Harper, portraying him as an undemocratic dictator-lite.
This will be useful as far as it goes, even if it leaves unaddressed the fundamental problem that our parliamentary rules allow any Prime Minister to ignore the will of Parliament; it’s just more obvious in a minority situation. Unfortunately, there still seems to be little appetite for real parliamentary or electoral reform, in the country and among the political parties.
Like those in the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament benefits from strong, passionate interest, and has the ability to translate this strength into on-the-ground pressure on MPs. Unlike the copyright fight, these newest Facebook activists have little leverage over Conservative MPs, and only superficial leverage over Liberals, who will benefit from Harper’s expansion of executive power once they return to the throne. As a result, they face an uphill battle to get Parliament to reconvene on January 25.
With luck, this current Facebook uprising will finally put to rest the question of whether Facebook groups can matter politically. Of course they can, but it depends on the skill of those using them. Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament have all the tools they need to be heard; all they have to do is use them. If they raise the political cost to future governments of suspending Parliament arbitrarily, they will have achieved something real.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The suspension of Parliament: What’s at stake, and an announcement
It’s been heartening to see the beginnings of some grassroots opposition to Stephen Harper’s decision to suspend Parliament rather than face tough questions about Afghan detainees from the opposition. Hopefully, the 185,000-plus people signed up for the Facebook page Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament (disclosure: I’ve joined the group) will put the lie to the claim that Canadians don’t care about prorogation.
The most common criticism of these Facebook groups is that they’re all talk, no action, so it’ll be interesting to see what effect, if any, the protests scheduled for this Sunday have on the political process.
But, as Susan Delacourt asks: where will this influence have an effect?
To accomplish anything worthwhile, you have to go through the political parties. However, at the moment they don’t really see any problem with the current electoral system – and it’s important to remember that, as Donald Savoie points out in Lawrence Martin’s column this morning, this is a systemic problem, not a partisan one. Even if the opposition parties get on board with the protests – and dramatic shifts in public opinion have a way of focusing politicians’ minds – and the Conservatives “get back to work,” that will do nothing to fix the underlying problem that got us into this mess.
The key point is this: convention, respect for tradition and commonly held views of what is acceptable behavour are the only things that have ever kept any Prime Minister who commands support from his caucus (and his tools for maintaining this control are themselves quite vast) from attempting what this Prime Minister is well on his way toward getting away with. Unlike the U.S. system, the Canadian system of government is relatively unconstrained by formal checks and balances.
Heat v. Light
It’s very easy for debates like these to degenerate into fact-free partisan name-calling à la Globe and Mail comments sections. This is why I think it is important to stress that while Stephen Harper bears full responsibility for thumbing his nose at Parliament, which in our system represents the will of Canadians, I’m under no illusions that Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton (were the NDP to become a credible alternative to form a government) would have acted much differently.
As my tiny contribution to the debate, rather than go on about how fascist the Conservatives are, how we should just throw the bums out or how all politicians are dishonest liars, I’m going to try something a little different. Since the problem is not with our politicians (surprise! They’re humans), but with what our parliamentary system permits them to do, I’m going to try to generate a bit of light by talking about Parliamentary committees.
Still awake? Great.
Committees are an absolutely crucial, if poorly understood, part of our political system. They provide the only way for our elected representatives to evaluate publicly laws and regulations that would otherwise be set exclusively by the governing party and the bureaucracy. Absent good faith, the committee process cannot function. This was a problem (though less so) under the Liberals and will only get worse over time, unless checked at the ballot box or through electoral or parliamentary reform.
As it has with Parliament itself, Harper’s Conservative government has worked to undermine parliamentary committee work, through Conservative MPs’ refusal to show up at key meetings and by working actively and systematically to thwart committee hearings. Examining how committees work will, I hope, shed some light on the larger problem of the increasing lack of accountability to parliament. Over the next few months I’ll discuss the reality that while the Conservatives’ actions are deplorable and, in some cases, more extreme than we have seen before, they are not without precedent.
As an economist with the Library of Parliament, I was a (non-partisan) staff member for several parliamentary committees, including the House Finance Committee and Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, from 1999-2005 (I was on an unpaid educational leave from the Library from 2005 to last March). It was a great job that gave me had a front-row seat to this key part of our lawmaking process.
I also hope that my discussion of the ins and outs of how parliamentary committees work, while not the most exciting topic in the blogosphere (Go Coco!), will be useful to anyone who wants to understand how our parliamentary system works, its benefits and drawbacks. Most of all, I hope that it will help contribute to a rational, respectful dialogue on how to reform our current political system.
This will be an irregular series, since I want to finish my dissertation before the end of the century. That said, how Canadian copyright policy is made is not completely unrelated to the quality of our parliamentary democracy.
First substantive post coming soon. Let’s see how this goes.
The most common criticism of these Facebook groups is that they’re all talk, no action, so it’ll be interesting to see what effect, if any, the protests scheduled for this Sunday have on the political process.
But, as Susan Delacourt asks: where will this influence have an effect?
To accomplish anything worthwhile, you have to go through the political parties. However, at the moment they don’t really see any problem with the current electoral system – and it’s important to remember that, as Donald Savoie points out in Lawrence Martin’s column this morning, this is a systemic problem, not a partisan one. Even if the opposition parties get on board with the protests – and dramatic shifts in public opinion have a way of focusing politicians’ minds – and the Conservatives “get back to work,” that will do nothing to fix the underlying problem that got us into this mess.
The key point is this: convention, respect for tradition and commonly held views of what is acceptable behavour are the only things that have ever kept any Prime Minister who commands support from his caucus (and his tools for maintaining this control are themselves quite vast) from attempting what this Prime Minister is well on his way toward getting away with. Unlike the U.S. system, the Canadian system of government is relatively unconstrained by formal checks and balances.
Heat v. Light
It’s very easy for debates like these to degenerate into fact-free partisan name-calling à la Globe and Mail comments sections. This is why I think it is important to stress that while Stephen Harper bears full responsibility for thumbing his nose at Parliament, which in our system represents the will of Canadians, I’m under no illusions that Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton (were the NDP to become a credible alternative to form a government) would have acted much differently.
As my tiny contribution to the debate, rather than go on about how fascist the Conservatives are, how we should just throw the bums out or how all politicians are dishonest liars, I’m going to try something a little different. Since the problem is not with our politicians (surprise! They’re humans), but with what our parliamentary system permits them to do, I’m going to try to generate a bit of light by talking about Parliamentary committees.
Still awake? Great.
Committees are an absolutely crucial, if poorly understood, part of our political system. They provide the only way for our elected representatives to evaluate publicly laws and regulations that would otherwise be set exclusively by the governing party and the bureaucracy. Absent good faith, the committee process cannot function. This was a problem (though less so) under the Liberals and will only get worse over time, unless checked at the ballot box or through electoral or parliamentary reform.
As it has with Parliament itself, Harper’s Conservative government has worked to undermine parliamentary committee work, through Conservative MPs’ refusal to show up at key meetings and by working actively and systematically to thwart committee hearings. Examining how committees work will, I hope, shed some light on the larger problem of the increasing lack of accountability to parliament. Over the next few months I’ll discuss the reality that while the Conservatives’ actions are deplorable and, in some cases, more extreme than we have seen before, they are not without precedent.
As an economist with the Library of Parliament, I was a (non-partisan) staff member for several parliamentary committees, including the House Finance Committee and Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, from 1999-2005 (I was on an unpaid educational leave from the Library from 2005 to last March). It was a great job that gave me had a front-row seat to this key part of our lawmaking process.
I also hope that my discussion of the ins and outs of how parliamentary committees work, while not the most exciting topic in the blogosphere (Go Coco!), will be useful to anyone who wants to understand how our parliamentary system works, its benefits and drawbacks. Most of all, I hope that it will help contribute to a rational, respectful dialogue on how to reform our current political system.
This will be an irregular series, since I want to finish my dissertation before the end of the century. That said, how Canadian copyright policy is made is not completely unrelated to the quality of our parliamentary democracy.
First substantive post coming soon. Let’s see how this goes.
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