The government has scorned Parliament, and shown a lack of respect to the people entrusted by Canadians to represent their interests...
The editorial concludes:
It is unacceptable that the government needs to be lectured by the Speaker on how to live within the rules of Canadian democracy.
I believe that speaks to the Bloc motion today.
We have been worried for a long time. The hon. member from Mount Royal said a long time ago that Parliament had been caught in a pincer movement between an activist judiciary and an ever more powerful executive branch.
Others have bemoaned the fact that sometimes governments view this Parliament as a minor process obstacle. Others have suggested that this now has become a suggestion box that we hang Christmas lights on once a year.
The late Jim Travers pointed out that the mantra on the Hill is now, “It has taken 500 years to wrestle power from the king and 50 years to get it back into one man's office”.
It was over two years ago that the late Jim Travers wrote his award-winning article, “The quiet unravelling of Canadian democracy”, when he compared his experience as a foreign correspondent in Africa to what is happening now.
He said:
Read the headlines, examine the evidence, plot the trend line dots and find that as Africans--from turnaround Ghana to impoverished Malawi--struggle to strengthen their democracies, Canadians are letting theirs slip.
He went on to say:
Once-solid institutions are being pulled apart by rising complexity and falling legitimacy.
He said that it would have been unthinkable that 30 years ago he would have:
—rejected out of hand the suggestion that Parliament would become a largely ceremonial body incapable of performing its defining functions of safeguarding public spending and holding ministers to account.
I think he would have been very happy by the Speaker's ruling yesterday.
He went on to say is:
—every one has happened and each has chipped away another brick of the democratic foundations underpinning Parliament. Incrementally and by stealth, Canada has become a situational democracy. What matters now is what works. Precedents, procedures and even laws have given way to the political doctrine of expediency.
He said:
Prime ministers are freeing themselves from the chains that once bound them to voters, Parliament, cabinet and party. From bottom to top, from citizen to head of state, every link in those chains is stressed, fractured or broken.
He concluded that famous article with:
If war is too serious to leave to generals, then surely democracy is too important to delegate to politicians.
I believe the Bloc Québécois motion today is a cry to all Canadians to come and help. We must. The cornerstone of every democracy is that citizens are actually paying attention.
In Robin Sears' article in Policy Options in the fall, he talked about that the problem with Parliament was not so much the gridlock of the minority House, it was the systemic issue found in all political capitals, namely, the growth in the power of the executive branch and the consequent decline in the role of the legislatures.
What we are really limiting here today is when we have that kind of concentration of power, we actually then have to rely on the person with the power to act with integrity. The Prime Minister and the government has nothing but contempt for democratic institutions. He thinks he makes the rules and tries to get around any restrictions placed on his power. In fact, in Tuktoyaktuk last summer, when asked if he had a licence when he was driving an ATV, he let it slip that he made the rules.
Yesterday, in Frances Russell's column, she said of the government:
It is dismantling, layer by layer, nearly 150 years of Canadian parliamentary democracy. Into the trash can has gone respect for the institution and traditions of Parliament, moderation in public discourse, toleration of differences of opinion, respect for civil society's institutions and even, at times, respect for the rule of law. Politics outside Parliament has descended into a cesspool of perpetual savage political attack ads. The poisonous hyperpartisanship of the American permanent election campaign is the new Canadian norm. Inside Parliament, the opposition is largely unable to hold government to account because ministers treat opposition MPs with flippancy, disdain, contempt, derision and insults.
On her blog yesterday, Susan Delacourt was trying to draw the distinction between value and values. She said that for the past five years the Conservatives have gambled, that voters only care about value, as we can certainly see today from the pathetic attempt of the Conservatives to defend themselves in their speeches. She said:
But if our collective attention turns to values, surrounding ethics, respect, character and idea-based politics, the Conservatives could be at a distinct disadvantage.
There may also be a conversation about value, about the value of this institution, the value of members of Parliament, and particularly the value of members of Parliament on the government side who have to expect better of their government at many times.
I remember when I was a new member of Parliament there were many times when we had to, as women's caucus or as backbench MPs, expect our government to do better. Whether it was to protect habitat on the endangered species bill or to do better for people with mental illness on the disability tax credit, we as parliamentarians, even sitting on the government side, were very organized in getting our government to do the right thing and to do better for Canadians. That is what hon. members do.
We cannot expect members of Parliament to just suit up in their team jerseys and treat this place like a sporting event, spewing forth talking points, quite often either purposely misleading, purposely saying half-truths or actual outright lies. It is sad to see this place where members of Parliament from the government side think that is what they were sent here to do, to just do the bidding of the government instead of actually doing their job as members of Parliament and holding government to account.
Albert Einstein once said that anyone who does not take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
It is astounding that so many of the items mentioned in the Bloc motion are really about not telling the truth. It is about lying on the smallest things, but it is also deliberate selection of the facts to purposely mislead. When the government said that the Conservative Party had been exonerated at the lower court, it was actually misleading Canadians by saying that the in and out scandal had been okayed by the court. It was very clear in that judgment that it was not at all. Clearly, in the judgment the court said that it wanted the Director of Public Prosecutions to continue its work, which of course ended up in four charges being laid.
This seems to be a government that does not want to tell the truth, where the end justifies the means. It is a government that prefers to play only with people who agree with it and discredits those who challenge it. We believe that Canadians would prefer a government that just tells the truth. We believe that many governments can balance a budget. The current government does not seem to be able to. However, Canadians require and should be able to expect actual truthfulness and a competent and honest government that will actually govern.
As can be seen by the details in the Bloc motion, it is a government that has done nothing but run an administration that campaigns. It is a campaign machine. It is not a government. It actually refuses to govern and refuses to abide by the rules.
Democracy is sometimes messy. Sometimes it is slow. Sometimes it requires space and time. However, this kind of top-down, autocratic decision-making which actually means that people can get around the rules or even break them is a very sad day for Canadian democracy.
Integrity means that people will act within the rules, act in the public good, even when they are not being watched.
The government came to power saying that it was going to improve transparency and accountability, and it has gone in exactly the opposite direction.
Even on the accountability front, if the Conservatives believe what is right is what one gets away with and what is wrong is what one gets caught doing, even when the Conservatives get caught, all they do is say that everybody else did it, even if that is not the truth.
The British North America Act talks about passing laws and peace, order and good government.
The Bloc Québécois motion says that we do not have good government and we have a government that does not think it needs to act in the best interests of Canadians or within the law.
In honour of the late Jim Travers, whose parting benediction was always to fly straight, I think today we hope, in his memory, the government will fly straight or that we will get another government that will.