The first ballot victory of Jagmeet Singh to lead the NDP has been heralded as a number of firsts first person of colour to lead one of the major federal parties, first person of a non-Judaeo-Christian religion to lead one of those same major federal parties, and signalling the true generation shift of Canadian politics by officially making Justin Trudeau the oldest leader of those major parties.

Singh however will not be the first leader selected without currently holding a seat in Parliament, which despite my reservations about the practice (in that it should not happen leaders should be chosen from caucus by caucus members), is not the end of the world so long as those leaders commit to getting a seat right away.  Singh, however, is not committing to do so, citing that he is "comfortable" with the current situation and letting the 44 members of caucus do the heavy lifting in the House of Commons while he is there to provide leadership from in the wings, as well as touring the country in order to become better known to Canadians.

The problem of course is not whether he's comfortable with the practice I'm sure that if they had their druthers, all other leaders would be "comfortable" with not bothering to get a seat so that they didn't have to subject themselves to the various indignities associated with Question Period, or the various interminable votes that take place from time to time especially when the opposition is trying to delay or frustrate the actions of the government.  Being able to skip all of that would be a great boon to party leaders, and allow them to really get out of the Ottawa bubble to connect with Canadians, and focus on the things that matter to Canadians, etcetera, etcetera.

But things don't work like that in our parliamentary system, and I'm not sure why Singh feels like he should get a free pass to avoid having to get a seat as soon as possible, and no, the fact that previous NDP leaders didn't have seats is not sufficient reason.  In 1995 when Alexa McDonough became leader, it was a period when the NDP were down to nine seats and didn't even have official party status, and had no seats in Atlantic Canada, where McDonough hailed from.  Likewise, in 2003, when Jack Layton assumed the reigns, the party had lost seats in their previous election and held only 13 seats, with only one of them in Ontario, where Layton hailed from.

The current situation is nothing like either of those circumstances.  The NDP have 44 seats, and there are soon to be six vacant ridings looking for candidates (two by-elections have been declared currently, with more on the way).  The seat vacated by the untimely passing of Liberal MP Arnold Chan is in the GTA, not far from Singh's current Brampton riding in absolute terms.  It's not like he would be running for a seat in Northern or Southwestern Ontario, where the party also holds seats were someone would need to step down and let him run in their place for the remainder of the current parliament in what would be a safe seat, which is of course what has traditionally been done.  Recall when Scott Brison stepped aside for Joe Clark to run in his riding in 2000 after Clark won the Progressive Conservative Party leadership.  The situation only lasted for a couple of months as a general election was called soon after, but nevertheless the principle of a leader having a seat as soon as possible was respected.  But we are two years from the next general election if we stick to the "fixed" date in legislation.

What is perhaps most galling is that this stance flies in the face of the very attacks that the NDP made against the Liberals in the 2011 election.  Recall during that infamous leaders' debate when Jack Layton (entirely falsely) accused Michael Ignatieff of not showing up in Parliament.

"If you want to be Prime Minister, you'd better learn how to be a Member of Parliament first," Layton admonished.  "Most Canadians if they don't show up for work, they don't get a promotion."  Layton went on to add, "You need to understand a little bit more about how our democracy works."

While Layton was entirely off-base in his metric of Ignatieff not being there (he was, but made a policy of not voting on the vast majority of private members' bills in order to give the caucus freedom of choice rather than just looking to him on how to vote, and Layton's metric was only related to votes, as Commons attendance records are not made public), one would think that this sentiment should apply to Singh as well.  After all, he wants a promotion having declared that he is now running to be Prime Minister so he should show up.  He should have a voting record in the federal Parliament, and he should have a record of performing in the House of Commons when it comes to holding the government to account.

Anyone who shrugs off this particular decision as anything other than rank hypocrisy should also explain how they're not also being disrespectful of Parliament as the place where the business of the nation happens.  As much as people like to pooh-pooh the Ottawa bubble and insisting that it doesn't matter to "real Canadians," it nevertheless is how our system operates and to dismiss it is to dismiss our very system of government, and it should matter.  By leaders dismissing the importance of Parliament, we damage the very fabric of our democracy, and it's not something that should be shrugged off because it may be inconvenient to have to run in a by-election, whether it's for a seat that's currently vacant, or for a guaranteed safe seat that one of their current members will have to step aside in order for him to fill.  In no way should it be acceptable for Singh to go without a seat for the next two years, and anyone suggesting otherwise might want to understand a bit more about how our democracy works.

It's been about four months since Andrew Scheer became leader of the Conservative Party, and in the time since, there is a definite sense that the party is approaching a state of omnishambles.  And I use the term advisedly it comes from the UK series The Thick Of It, which Scheer would appreciate in his bid to rebrand his critic roles with their Westminster-equivalent "shadow ministers," and gets very insistent that we refer to them as such.

What is striking for those of us who live and work in the Ottawa bubble is that there appears to be a crisis of competence brewing within the Office of the Leader of the Opposition.  The people who knew how to manage things in the House of Commons seem to have fled along with Rona Ambrose, and we are left with a whole lot of bumbling around, crashing around from angry populist sound-bite to angry populist sound-bite, stroking outrage whenever they can find it while at the same time insisting that they are looking to practice "positive politics."

Question Period has become shambolic.  Not only is Scheer unable to look like he's seriously holding the government to account, unable to deliver questions without a) reading, b) smiling, and c) speaking in a breathy cadence, but tactically his choices make no sense.  For the first four-and-a-half days, they stuck to a single topic that was not only poorly managed from a substantive point of view, but they ignored vast swaths of other policy areas where the government should be held to account.  Instead, it's the same question about twenty-five times a day, with nothing to show for it but a handful of media clips that will go directly to YouTube and Facebook.  And they're not even good questions about the topic of the proposed tax changes, for which there are important questions to be asked about some of the unintended consequences that have been identified.  Instead, we've had little more than insinuation and allegation about plans to destroy the economy by a tax-grab to pay for government expenditures (never mind the fact that the money generated from these changes will be a rounding error), and wildly overblown numbers that don't reflect the situation on the ground.  Whenever they talk about the "73 percent tax rate" that these changes could bring to some private corporation owners, what they neglect to say is that this would only be the case for those making $150,000 in Ontario very much not the small business owners they showcase in their questions.  Add to that, Scheer's "positive politics" that totally aren't about class warfare or the politics of envy seem to be focused pretty much exclusively on the family fortunes of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, with further insinuations of feathered nests and now conspiracy theories about how these changes are done for the benefits of driving small businesses to take out private pensions from Morneau-Shepell.

There has been a focus on form over substance, starting with Scheer's picks for critic portfolios.  One might think that someone who fanboys over Westminster as much as Scheer does might try to introduce some changes into the way that his critics operate in order to better replicate the shadow minister system of the UK.  That would imply putting a great deal of more thought into regional, linguistic and gender balance in the creation of a "shadow cabinet" that could reasonably form a government, and ensure that they are dedicated to being actual shadow ministers doing the job full-time, not attending committees, working to ensure that they get tours of departments and regular briefings from the civil servants, as well as putting forward a shadow budget that would be a credible document to demonstrate how an alternate government would operate should the current government fall and they be asked to form a government in their stead.

But none of this has happened.  Instead of creating a credible shadow cabinet, Scheer has created starring roles for his deputy leader and Quebec lieutenant, while giving important critic portfolios to MPs of dubious credentials, typified by his choice of Pierre Poilievre as finance critic.  Critics are not only on committees, but Scheer has been insistent on putting those critics in the chairs of opposition-controlled committees, meaning that those committees are not operating as independently as those in Westminster, but that the more neutral position of chair is occupied by someone who is supposed to be the point person for holding the government to account, which contradicts the chair's role of being the facilitator of discussion and arbiter of rules being followed.

Nowhere is this more prevalent an issue than with Status of Women committee, where the Liberals chose to walk out rather than accept Scheer's choice for chair, critic Rachael Harder, because of her expressed pro-life views and actions.  It was a deliberately provocative move that Scheer has done to try and cast the Liberals and NDP in an intolerant light and in being against free speech, but in doing so, he has not only betrayed his promise not to re-open the abortion issue, but he has tried to cast this as the Liberals' attempt to distract from the tax change issue.  The problem with that is that Scheer created the very distraction that he's accusing the Liberals of, scoring on his own net.

I am forced to wonder if there are any experienced staffers left in Scheer's office, or if the last of them fled for greener pastures when he took over.  It's also a reminder that for a party that spent the better part of a decade trying to burn down the institutions of our parliament, they seem terribly ill-equipped to have to deal with their more-or-less normal operations once again (not that the Liberals are doing a stellar job with those very same institutions, let it be said).  I would very much like us to have a functioning Official Opposition in this country, but right now, I'm only filled with a sense of despair for the future of our parliament.

Photo Credit: Huffington Post

It was announced Monday morning that by acclamation, Senator Yuen Pau Woo and Senator Raymonde Saint-Germain won the positions of Facilitator and Deputy Facilitator of the Independent Senators Group, replacing Senator Elaine McCoy, who opted not to run again.  That this large and growing group of senators soon to hold the plurality of the Upper Chamber is now being led by a team with very little parliamentary experience is going to mean interesting times ahead, and there could be red flags on the horizon if they aren't careful.

To start off with, I will admit that I'm not too familiar with either Woo or Saint-Germain, and I'm frankly shocked that some of the more forceful personalities within the ISG didn't make bids for the leadership positions themselves, especially considering how much some of them had been clamouring for media attention and trying to position themselves in the public eye that it would have seemed like going for leadership positions would be a natural next step.  That didn't happen, so we'll see if that is because they have opted to spend their time and attention for advocating for some particular causes that they are taking activist positions about, or if they're biding their time to make a bid during the next go-around, letting Woo and Saint-Germain do the heavy-lifting that will be required of them in the coming months.

What I do know of Woo has largely to do with the fact that he volunteered to sponsor the government's budget implementation bill through the Senate, but his goals were to act not as a proponent of the legislation, but as a shepherd through the Senate's processes something which makes me a bit uneasy given that this is very much the kind of bill that a minister of the Crown meaning the Leader of the Government in the Senate should be responsible for in the Senate in order to ensure that it conforms with the norms of Responsible Government, and that a money bill was overseen by someone in Cabinet.  That the current Government Leader err, "government representative," Senator Peter Harder (who is not in Cabinet) saw fit to pass this money bill off onto someone who is not affiliated with the governing party is troubling for the direction that the Senate is headed.

As part of his job as shepherd, Woo's goal was for it to be as scrutinized as effectively as possible something that should realistically be the job of an opposition critic, making the blurring of roles problematic.  By all accounts, Woo did a good job of it, ensuring that all of his colleagues had as much information as possible, and made sure to organize briefings with department officials outside of the committee study in order to ensure that their technical questions were answered, but again, that blurring of roles makes me uneasy, especially now that he is taking a leadership position for what will soon be the largest caucus group in the Senate.

As part of their letter to members of the ISG to explain their joint candidacy, Woo and Saint-Germain explained that they saw the work of the ISG as being able to change the entire institution of the Senate something that sets off my Westminster warning bells.

In keeping with the ideals of the ISG as being a caucus of independents, they pledged that each member of that caucus has the right to vote freely "without hindrance or retaliation," in the Chamber or on committee, and that they would not take any actions that would compromise that independence of thought or action, in appearance or reality.  They also pledged a collegial governance style, and that would use the different expertise of the members of the ISG, and that they would be transparent with the funds conferred upon the group for their shared services.

"Our parliamentary ethics are based on respect for the institution of the Senate and the protection of its rights and privileges," they wrote.  "This respect extends to all senators, whatever their origin or affiliation, and to the solemn role of the Speaker."

Rights and privileges are well and good to talk about, but my questions now extend to how they plan to extend theses protections in the face of Senator Harder's push for an external oversight model being pushed for by the Auditor General which would compromise the privileges of the Senate and would grievously damage its role as a self-governing institution.  Because these are new senators taking on this role, do they have enough of an appreciation for the depth and scope of the privileges of the institution that they are claiming respect for?  When you have someone like Harder preaching the dubious gospels of "what the Fathers of Confederation intended" when it comes to creating his particular vision of the Senate without there being any party caucuses one that would be much more pliable for him to co-opt I worry that too many of the new senators won't have sufficient knowledge to push back against this move.

I know that Woo and Saint-Germain will have a busy few weeks as they try to get the ISG's ducks in a row in advance of the sessional order expiring on October 31^st, at which point they will have to determine how the ISG will play along with other caucuses when it comes to things like committee membership and leadership, and the role they will play with the Internal Economy Committee.  There is the question of whether the ISG will make a play to become the Official Opposition once they have plurality in the Chamber when the next round of appointments are made, though I'm told that Woo and Saint-Germain will be consulting with the rest of the ISG on that matter.  What they decide could shape the future of the Senate, and I intend to keep a close eye on events as they happen.

Photo Credit: Senate of Canada