The return of a skeleton-crew Parliament to pass new emergency fiscal measures is already proving to be a more interesting notion than it might have been, but also a more frustrating one. There are egos cropping up in the frame, and rumours of somewhat alarming measures being proposed from the government (and promptly being leaked to the media, because a fight over Parliamentary privilege is exactly what the country needs right now) are making it all a fraught situation. Suffice to say, nobody is handling what should be a fairly painless situation very well at all.
For starters, political leaders who were across the country have ignored the advice to stay home in order to ensure that they are back in Ottawa for the Skeleton Parliament. While quorum is 20 MPs including the Speaker, we'll have 32 or 33 MPs present, which is about eleven or twelve too many for the purposes especially as the Conservative seem to have insisted on ensuring that they have regionally-appropriate MPs in place rather than simply relying on geographically-close MPs to conduct business on their behalf (though calling Tim Uppal regionally appropriate is a bit cute, given that he has lived in Ottawa for years and not his Edmonton riding). Even more to the point, the Conservatives, great stewards of the public purse and scolds of government waste, extracted the promise that Andrew Scheer, Candice Bergen, and Senator Don Plett had to be shuttled to Ottawa on government or RCAF aircraft. Jagmeet Singh also travelled from Burnaby to Ottawa for the event, because why model the good behaviour of staying home that they're telling everyone else to listen to?
I am particularly concerned that this move to ensure that these leaders are in Ottawa is for the sheer optics of the situation that they felt the need to be on the cameras in the Chamber to look magnanimous on behalf of their parties when it comes to supporting necessary fiscal measures to help Canadians as the economy stalls over the pandemic, rather than letting any of their more local backbenchers take any of that glory. That kind of ego is part of the problem with how parties have devolved into cults of personality, where the leader must be seen at the forefront of everything especially if they think there is some kind of reflected glory to be had. That they contravened the public messaging to stay at home in order to be sure that they got any spotlight over the handling of the pandemic and accompanying economic crisis is a signal of just how far things have degenerated in the operation of our system.
As if this wasn't bad enough, the reporting on Monday evening of the proposals being floated by the government around their emergency bailout legislation are that it would include some clearly unconstitutional measures that would essentially make taxation a delegated authority until December 2021 something that goes against how Westminster parliaments have functioned since 1689. And while I have no doubt that this was meant innocently giving Bill Morneau maximum flexibility in combatting the economic downturn without the need to recall another Skeleton Parliament within a week or two it clearly is not kosher. Also reportedly in those proposals was unlimited borrowing authority which has been a particular bugaboo of mine after the Liberals weaselled out on their promise to restore borrowing authority to the Commons after the Conservatives sneakily delegated it to Cabinet as part of one of their omnibus budget implementation bills. Instead of restoring that power, they instead instituted a debt ceiling that they would only seek authority to borrow more from the Commons if they surpassed that. Given how much borrowed money they will need as part of their fiscal aid package, they are no doubt looking to remove this self-imposed limitation, fully breaking the promise they once stood for.
If anything, this bout of hubris is a result of the other parties being all too willing to suspend Parliament for the duration of the pandemic rather than taking more reasonable precautions and keeping some ongoing oversight in a more continuous Skeleton Parliament rather than the big show of recalling it to pass more sweeping measures in one fell swoop really, the only way to pass legislation quickly, because of the rules around how so many sitting days need to pass between various stages of the bill being adopted. Looking for a blank cheque in the face of a crisis is basically just saying "We only wanted to ensure that we didn't need to recall you every few weeks," and "it would just be a really big bother," rather than you know, ensuring that the lights are still on in Parliament and that the job of ensuring things like scrutiny and oversight, and accountability are still being practiced rather than shrugged off because it's inconvenient to have MPs in Ottawa. And to be perfectly frank, it's utterly in keeping with this government to float an untenable idea and blowing up all of the goodwill they've accumulated because they cluelessly overreached. (That said, I also have to wonder whether anyone in the PMO or Morneau's office scooped up some of Senator Peter Harder's more "brilliant" staffers who advised him to do boneheaded things like declare procedural warfare only to be forced to walk it back immediately).
No doubt that by the time the final version of the bill is tabled in the Skeleton Parliament, the more contentious aspects will have been negotiated away and the fiscal aid package will breeze through Parliament perhaps with a few more harsh and performative words from Scheer and maybe Singh but the point remains that suspending Parliament is looking increasingly like a dumb move that didn't actually make things any more expedient, and possibly only made things worse in the longer term. Parliament matters, and it seems that this government just inadvertently proved that yet again because they can't help themselves. So let's keep this Skeleton Parliament rolling rather than risk another of these incidents.
Photo Credit: CBC News
