October 8, 2012 - The Hill Times, The Charlottetown Guardian
By Colin Kenny
Allow me to share with you one little item from last Spring’s omnibus budget bill that left me shaking my head.
Several years ago I introduced a private member’s bill requiring the federal government to upgrade its fleet of vehicles to make them more environmentally friendly. The bill passed. It requires that the government work progressively to convert its fleet of vehicles to ethanol, methanol, natural gas, propane or electricity.
The eighth and final section of what became the Alternative Fuels Act, required that the government report to Parliament every year on what progress it had made in the proceeding year to reduce pollution in its vehicles.
Weeks after the government’s 425-page omnibus budget bill had passed I read through it again to see what I – and others – might had missed.
Surprise! On page 196 I discovered that I had missed a tiny torpedo. The government hadn’t dared repeal my bill – that would have branded the Conservatives even more indelibly as environmental vandals. Instead it had simply used nine words to repeal Section 8 of the bill. No more reporting to Parliament. The government’s report card on cleaning up the vehicles hadn’t been very good the year before, so . . . time to slam the lid on the evidence.
This is a government that promised much greater transparency when it came to power. Omnibus bills have nothing to do with transparency – their very mission is to muddle and confuse. Then again, why should Stephen Harper worry about transparency, when most voters only seem to care about their wallets?
During their six decades of Cold War with the Soviet Union, western countries could boast of the two clear advantages that they offered their citizens: better economic opportunities, and democracy.
Twenty-three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is becoming increasingly obvious which of these two benefits matters most to citizens in western countries. And it ain’t democracy.
In the immortal words of James Carville, advisor to president-to-be Bill Clinton: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Oh, democracy still sits on a pedestal. We still proselytize, selling democracy’s virtues in countries like Libya and Egypt and Burma.
We still say its what our troops fight for overseas.
Funny thing, though, politicians who abuse democracy here at home don’t seem to outrage us like they once did – like they did when the Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent was turfed out in 1957 for closing off parliamentary debate on a pipeline bill. Today, you wonder if anybody would notice. As long as the government keeps us as far away as possible from the fate of the Greek and Spanish economies, the polls show that most voters will tolerate just about anything.
That has allowed the prime minister to introduce the concept of battering ram democracy. Mr. Harper has a majority government, and an agenda. Every significant item on that agenda will be rammed into place before the next election. Period.
Prorogue Parliament for no good reason other than the opposition seems to be getting its act together? Done. Hold committee meetings that have been traditionally open to the media in camera? Done. Script cabinet ministers’ responses in Question Period so they often don’t even reflect the questions asked? Done.
Introduce massive omnibus bills in the Commons and impose time limits on passage? Done – once with last years’ budget, and, despite widespread criticism, scheduled to be done again this fall.
What’s wrong with omnibus bills? They take a multitude of important issues, wrap them into one big ball, and throw it at the public in a way that the issues become blurred. Neither opposition parties nor the media are given the opportunity to focus on any one of a wide variety of issues addressed in the bill. There is scant opportunity to listen to expert witnesses testify in committee.
When flaws do become evident in the government's proposals, criticism gets lost in the overall haze created by trying to juggle so many balls in one bill. They are a lot like the cable companies’ TV packages – it's impossible to order what you want without getting all kinds of things you really don't care for at all.
Last Spring’s omnibus budget bill made changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Kyoto Protection Implementation Act (repealed), the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act, the National Energy Board Act, the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Alternative Fuels Act, the Parks Canada Agency Act, the Canadian National Marine Conservation Areas Act, the Canada National Parks Act, the Canadian Security Service Intelligence Act, the Customs Act, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Status of the Artist Act, the Department of Social Development Act and the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.
The bill was supposed to be about economic stimulation. Its title: the Jobs Growth and Long Term Prosperity Act. James Carville would have been pleased with that title, but not the contents, most of which had nothing to do with fixing the economy.
All those massive changes to all those diverse acts. Yet the government declared the bill to be perfect, refusing to consider a single opposition amendment to any of the changes. In doing so, it essentially obliterated the constitutional role of the Official Opposition, as much as declaring it inconsequential.
Having given Parliament and Canadians, the bird once, Mr. Harper has announced he will be right back at it this fall. This despite the fact that as a Reform MP in 1994, he lambasted a smaller Liberal omnibus bill, deriding it as taking “a kitchen sink approach” that violated “the interest of democracy.”
I agree. When Liberals do it, when Conservatives do it, it stinks.
We sell democracy abroad. Let’s practice it at home.
[Colin Kenny is former chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. Kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca]