"I would like to hear from TUC members about how you are participating in the important debate about the importance of Canadian fisheries. Andrew Coyne says we shouldn't be cynical. Is he right? What more can we do? What are you doing? Call me and let me know."
Jeff Surtees - CEO
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The Opposition pushback over Bill C-38 — driven in part by the Green Party caucus of one, Elizabeth May — is about far more than political partisanship. It's about whether Parliament can prevent being pushed into complete irrelevance by a government which abuses its power, writes Andrew Coyne. |
The C-38 debate is a last-ditch effort to save democracy's soul
By Andrew Coyne,
Postmedia News
June 13, 2012
The House of Commons was to begin voting Wednesday night on several hundred amendments to Bill C-38, the 425-page monster known as the omnibus budget implementation bill. The voting was expected to go on all night and all day Thursday.
Viewed one way, the whole thing is quite silly. Given the government's majority, none of the amendments is likely to pass, nor is the bill itself in any danger of defeat. Viewed another way, however, this is an important moment. For the first time since the last election, the opposition is putting up a serious fight against the abuses this government has visited upon Parliament: not only the omnibus bill — which repeals, amends or introduces more than 60 different pieces of legislation — but the repeated, almost routine curtailing of debate by means of "time allocation"; the failures of oversight, misstating of costs, and abdication of responsibility in the F-35 purchase; and the refusal to provide basic information on spending to Parliament or the Parliamentary Budget Officer — to say nothing of the stonewalling, prorogations and other indignities of the minority years.
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