Anyway, we'll continue.
Again, regarding the Speaker and the omnibus bills, for instance, it said that would “weaken one of the government's most powerful shields against scrutiny”.
It said that a proposal to dedicate.... Sorry, I read that already. That was the Prime Minister showing up, again the concern being that he's not going to be there the rest of the time.
The Toronto Star editorial continues:
But several others are cause for concern. A proposal to limit debate by strictly scheduling the stages of a bill's passage would likely increase efficiency, but at what cost to democracy? Same goes for measures that would limit speeches in committee, eliminate opposition filibustering and remove other tools for delaying government legislation or alerting the public to problems. In our version of democracy, when the government has a majority, the opposition has few tools as it is.
The Toronto Star is making the case, as did The Globe and Mail, that in the face of a majority government, the Canadian parliamentary system loads everything up in favour of the government, and there are very few, with limited affect, tools available to the opposition.
Here we are with the government of sunny ways and accountability taking away some of the few tools we have, and respective committees not even halfway through their mandate are being accused of being anti-democratic. Those are exactly the arguments we've been making.
It's not as though we've been making a whole myriad of arguments and it took the editorials to come in and focus on things and separate what is irrelevant. Those are the very arguments we've been making, and they aren't limitless.
It's not as though we're creating all kinds of false bogeymen here. Our arguments have been consistent and focused, and they are matched by the comments and position of The Globe and Mail editorial and the Toronto Star editorial. I hearken government members back to the Liberal editorial that said that arguments from the government to the contrary—my words, my paraphrasing—are absurd. That word was theirs: “absurd”.
So again, from the last part:
In our version of democracy, when the government has a majority, the opposition has few tools as it is.
In a richly ironic gesture, on the same day the discussion paper was released, a Liberal MP tabled a motion demanding the relevant parliamentary committee issue recommendations on reform by June 2. Why the rush?
I'm still quoting, by the way: “Why the rush?”
Remember, we were asking. We were trying to figure out whether June 2 was a special day or June 3 was a special day and we had to finish by June 2 because Parliament was going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight if we didn't get this report with its recommendations done? We never did get an answer as to what the magic about June 2 or the avoidance of June 3 was.
In a practical way, the only thing I could think of was that they wanted enough time to convert the report into...probably a motion. It doesn't take a bill to change the Standing Orders; a motion would do it. It would give them time to bring in that motion, use the guillotine of ending debate, and ram the sucker through before we rise in June, so that they can come back fully equipped with all their new weaponry in the fall, ready to take on that obstructionist, evil, anti-democratic opposition whose actions required them to take these drastic steps in the first place.
I suspect that's what June 2 was, but my opinion and a toonie gets you a coffee; there's no guarantee past that. There may be some other magical reason or blatant reason I've missed that June 2 was the day, but boy, the government was sure hell-bent that it was going to be June 2 no matter what.
It's funny that, when it realized it needed to start moving, the first moveable piece was June 2. Whatever reason there was for it originally quickly became less important once it looked as though this wasn't going to go tickety-boo in exactly the way the government hoped.
Again:
In a richly ironic gesture on the same day the discussion paper was released, a Liberal MP tabled a motion demanding the relevant party issue recommendations on reform by June 2. Why the rush? Surely democratic reform ought to be pursued by democratic means
—there's a concept the government ought to give some thought to—
with all the deliberations and debate that those entail. In response to the motion, members of the committee filibustered to draw attention to the abuse of Parliament, using a tool they might not have for much longer.
There's real change: campaign on the left, govern on the right.
A new report from Samara, a non-profit organization dedicated to civic engagement, suggests that confidence in Canada's democracy, while low, has increased since Harper's defeat. In 2015, survey respondents gave our democratic leadership a grade of D;
—heads down: that's a D, as in David—
this year, the mark improved to a C.
Next year's is going to be so bad. Mom and Dad are going to be really upset when they see this next report card, because I think there's a great big F coming, especially in the part that talks about democracy and respect therefor. We're not going to want to bring that report card home. We all remember that.
Well, Mr. Chan, you probably had good report cards; maybe that's why it wasn't a problem. Let me tell you that for guys like me, that—was it two or three times a year?—was the worst part of the year, because I certainly didn't have a lot of shiny A's and I didn't have many good reasons for not having them.
To continue:
This jibes with an EKOS poll that found that, after decades of erosion, public trust in government spiked after Trudeau's election win.
The bad thing is what they did with it. That was the bad thing, and it continues to be the bad thing, but it was a good thing that this government getting elected gave people renewed hope in their parliamentary system at a time when around the world it's going the other way. That was a good thing, and great for the Liberal brand, which I complimented earlier in this modest discussion. The government played to fantastic advantage when they first got elected.
I have to tell you that in the early days it was so bad, I could hardly look at the TV. I could only imagine how Hillary felt in those months following, because I have to tell that you every time I looked at that darn TV, it just ruined my day. It would get worse and worse, and then I'd think that the next day they would trip up. Then when they did trip up, things were going so well it didn't stick.