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Parliament Is Stalled
The three opposition parties in the House
of Commons are deathly afraid of a federal election. The NDP,
for example, is nervous that the Green Party is encroaching
on its support. Never higher in the polls in the past few
years than 18%, the NDP's support has fallen as low as 13%
in the past few months with the Green Party picking up the
difference. The Bloc Quebeçois (BQ) was devastated
by the Quebec provincial election in March when its provincial
counterpart, the Parti Quebeçois (PQ) fell to third
place while the Conservative Action Démocratique du
Québec ran a close second to the minority provincial
Liberals. This raised considerable doubts about the future
of a sovereignty issue in Quebec and hence the future of the
BQ. The Liberals, on the other hand, are still reeling from
the 2006 election when they lost power to the Conservatives.
Their leader, Stéphane Dion, has not won over the hearts
and minds of Canadians, especially those in Ontario and in
the western provinces where voter support is essential for
an election victory. Canadians generally are not impressed
by Mr. Dion's lack of English skills as well as his practice
of never responding to questions in neat sound bites, but
instead ponderously responding in complicated paragraphs as
though addressing a university class. Mr. Dion, in short,
has not, to date, been a success as Liberal leader.
Therefore, in order to avoid a surprise election,
the opposition parties, have been scrupulously careful to
pass the government's bills if their defeat could lead to
the dissolution of Parliament and a new election. Consequently,
the Conservatives' Accountability Act and its budget (March
2007) have been grudgingly passed into law with either one
or the other of the opposition parties backing the government,
not out of belief, but out of pure necessity.
The opposition parties, however, all together
outnumber the Conservative in the House of Commons, in the
Senate and on all the Committees. Consequently, the opposition
parties are now gleefully passing private member's bills into
law in a number of areas on which the Conservatives are diametrically
opposed.
For example:
Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez (Honoré-Mercier,
Quebec) introduced a bill on the environment ordering the
government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35%. This
objective is one which even Liberal leader Stéphane
Dion, in his previous life as the Liberal Minister of the
Environment, conceded could not be achieved. This bill has
been passed by both the House of Commons and the Senate.
NDP MP Denise Savoie (Victoria) introduced
a Bill (C-303) to establish a national day care plan in Canada.
This bill masquerades as only a bill to fund "early child
education" and "early learning and child care program,"
but, in effect, is the old Liberal child care plan resurrected.
The bill will have 3rd and final reading in the House of Commons
in September when Parliament resumes sitting after the summer
recess. It will undoubtedly pass with the united support of
the NDP, Liberal, and BQ.
Senate Blocking Legislation
The majority Liberal Senators are having a
high old time refusing to pass any bills that are not to their
choosing. For example:
· The majority of Liberal Senators
shelved the government's legislation to restrict a Senator's
term of office to eight-years instead of the current 75 years
of age.
· The Conservative Bill C-22 to raise the age of consent
for sexual activity from 14 years to 16 years (if it were
up to REAL Women, we would have had it raised to 18 years!)
still is before the House of Commons for 3rd and final vote,
after which it will be sent up to the Senate. It is expected
the bill will have a difficult time in the Senate where it
will come under fresh attack because it does not lower the
age of consent for anal sex now set at 18 years of age.
· A troublesome private member's bill (S-207), which
prohibits parents from spanking their children, was introduced
into the Senate by Liberal Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette
back on April 5, 2006. The bill received second reading in
the Senate on December 14, 2006 and provides that section
43 of the Criminal Code which now permits the spanking of
children providing it is reasonable under the circumstance,
be removed from the Criminal Code. Parental authority in regard
to raising their children has been a major concern for REAL
Women and we have intervened in three different court trials
when S.43 of the Code was being legally challenged. In all
of these court challenges, the courts have upheld our arguments
that parents should be permitted to spank their children if
it is reasonable. There is, of course, a large difference
between the spanking of a child by a loving parent and child
abuse, which difference the courts clearly understood. The
Supreme Court handed down its decision on this issue on December
16, 1998 and we had hoped that this matter would be finally
settled then. It seems, however, that those in the Senate,
who believe that the State and not the parents should determine
the methods for raising of the children are doing their utmost
to navigate around the court decisions by bringing Bill C-207
forward. The bill will receive third and final reading in
the Senate in the fall. This bill is in keeping with a Senate
report last April by the Senate Standing Committee on Human
Rights, which also recommended that the spanking of children
be abolished.
There are also many flagship criminal justice
initiatives of the Conservative government left unfinished
when Parliament recessed for the summer on June 22nd. They
will continue their rocky journey through the Senate when
Parliament resumes sitting on September 18.
All in all, Parliament seems to be stalled
with the Opposition parties using their united voting power
to prevent the Conservatives from getting legislation passed
and also initiating their own liberal agenda.
It is quite a mess! The Senate, by the way,
consists of 62 Liberals, 22 Conservatives, 3 Progressive Conservatives,
1 NDP, 5 Independents and with 12 vacancies making a total
of 105 seats.
Senators, of course, represent no one in Parliament
but themselves, in that they have no constituency and were
appointed to their positions only because they contributed
to their political party - either by services rendered or
for their generous financial contributions to the party. The
basic salary for a Senator is $125,800 annually. The purpose
of the Senate is supposed to be to serve as a chamber of sober
second thought. Instead, it has become the legacy of one-party
rule, a permanent Liberal establishment that seeks to frustrate
a Conservative government at every turn, by pushing the limits
of what is democratically tolerable.
What to do about it? Short of opening that
can of worms known as a constitutional amendment, it seems
that a minority Conservative government will continue to swim
in shark infested waters.
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