Ned Franks is sounding the alarm about the current state of Parliament – it’s sitting less, passing fewer bills, and the bills it does pass are more likely to be omnibus bills that are so stuffed with things that it bypasses the parliamentary process of proper study for bills. And he’s entirely right. Though I would say that the passage of so few bills is in part because the government has put forward a number of Very Bad Bills, and then playing very silly games with the Order Paper when it comes to debating these bills, bringing them forward for a mere couple of hours at a time, weeks apart, with the sheer intention of being able to declare that the Opposition (or the Evil Liberal Senate, when it was still dominated by Liberals) that’s holding up their magnificent pieces of legislation, and oh how awful it is that they don’t have a majority and can’t ram every little thing through they like. But yes, Ned Franks is right – this is a very alarming sign. It’s too bad we have an electorate that is too sleepy to actually care about the fact that the government is undermining parliamentary democracy and actually do something about it.
Not to be outdone, Lawrence Cannon is worried about the rule of law in Russia after they jailed an oil tycoon there for likely political reasons. That’s actually quite rich when you look at Cannon’s government’s own record when it comes to the rule of law (*cough*Kyoto bill*cough*).
First Harper butters up Jack Layton, then Jim Flaherty starts saying nice things about Thomas Mulcair. Sounds like a government trying to find a new coalition partner since the Liberals grew more of a backbone of late, doesn’t it?
Here’s a nice takedown of Sun Media’s jihad against the SummerWorks theatre festival (and their scandalous “terrorism” play).
And Susan Delacourt takes a look at depression and parliamentary politics.
Why you can trust Xtra
