Point of View 2-Book Bundle. Douglas L. Bland

      The final topic to be canvassed regarding a change in Commons’ procedure that has allowed the government to compromise the House’s ability to force accountability is the government’s increasing reliance on omnibus bills and, more recently, omnibus motions.

      The House of Commons is supposed to vet, scrutinize, and, theoretically, improve government legislation. That becomes impossible when the government submits omnibus bills (lengthy bills containing changes to legislation in disparate areas). Time allocations, implicit in the standing orders or imposed by motion, provide inadequate time for MPs to scrutinize complex and lengthy pieces of legislation. The government understands this and submits such bills deliberately.

      The most egregious recent example of an omnibus budget bill was the Budget Implementation Act of 2012,[3] which came in at over 1,100 pages. The bill had many non-budgetary items attached to it such as changes to the environmental assessment process.

      Invariably, an omnibus budget bill will contain multiple wedge issues, which make it difficult for the opposition parties to vote against the legislation without also voting against a part of the bill that they otherwise would have supported. This kind of packaging allows the cabinet to gleefully point out in Question Period every time the opposition votes against a specific line item in the omnibus budget.

      For example, if a question arises concerning the care and treatment of injured war veterans, the minister will take great delight in pointing out that the last budget bill contained a $x increase to the Department of Veterans Affairs, but the honourable member asking the question voted against it. Although that might be true, the MP only did so because he or she was wedged; he or she was not voting against the increase to the department or program under consideration but was voting “no” to the government’s spending plans in their entirety.

      In order to properly hold the government to account, it is necessary to break omnibus bills up into logical, bite-sized pieces. Doing so allows them to be properly vetted and then voted on individually rather than as part of an unmanageable package

      More recently, we are beginning to see omnibus government motions also. In the first week back following prorogation in the fall of 2013, the government House leader introduced a single motion combining such completely unrelated concepts as: the reformation of parts of the MP expense regime, the restoration of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women, and, notably, the restoration in its entirety the government’s legislative agenda to the stage that it was at prior to the government’s decision to prorogue. So, in order to vote for the continuation of a critical special committee engaged in an important study, the members were wedged into allowing the restoration of the government’s legislative agenda, notwithstanding the longstanding rule that government bills die when the government opts for prorogation.

      The government should not be allowed to package such unrelated concepts. In fact, in at least one instance the Speaker actually ruled in favour of an NDP request for partial severance. However, the growing reliance on long, disparate omnibus bills and motions is clearly a deliberate and calculated attempt by the government to prevent the House of Commons from holding it to account.

      2. Parliamentary Committees

      Committees of the House of Commons have traditionally played an important role in the vetting and improving of the legislation referred to them. Many committees of the House have worked together to improve and tweak legislation passed in principle by the entire House of Commons at Second Reading.

      However, currently, the House committees have become so politicized that they have become completely useless at vetting or improving legislative initiatives. The committee process has been completely commandeered by the executive, most notably by the Prime Minister’s Office.

      Perhaps the clearest example of this is the above-referenced case of interference by the PMO and the minister of justice with the Access and Privacy Committee regarding PMB C-461, the private member’s bill I introduced dealing with public sector salary disclosure. The government decided it was opposed to allowing the public access to such information and the PMO instructed compliant members of the committee to gut the bill.

      The committee performed a charade in which they pretended to study the legislation. Not a single witness who testified was in favour of raising the salary disclosure bar. Regardless, amendments were proposed to raise the bar to a level that would ensure it would apply to no deputy minister, and then, without any debate on the amendment, compliant members of the committee did the PMO’s bidding.

      How is it possible that such a well-orchestrated political manoeuvre can be executed? It is the result of a little-known process not established by the standing orders, regarding committees: the pre-committee meeting. It is at the all-important pre-committee meeting that specific decisions are conveyed to the members of the caucus sitting on a specified committee. All concerns are addressed and the instructions are made clear by executive staffers to the elected committee members.

      No detail is left to chance; the entire committee process is managed by executive staffers from the minister’s office affected by the proceeding. When ministerial staff run into logistical problems that they have insufficient clout to resolve they call for back-up heavies from the PMO. Even the questioning of witnesses is decided on by executive staffers — they provide “suggested” questions for the use of the members when posing questions during committee hearings. If the minister is the witness, there is nothing “suggested” about the questions distributed to committee members — the distributed questions are scripts that are to be followed to the letter.

      Similarly, decisions regarding amendments proposed by Opposition members are discussed, and a designated MP, generally the parliamentary secretary, will be provided with speaking notes as to why an opposition amendment is inappropriate and why the government members will not support it.

      I used to pride myself on my ability to cross-examine hostile witnesses at Justice Committee meetings (that is, witnesses not supportive of the proposed government legislation). Although limited by strict time limits (often five minutes), I was nonetheless frequently able to poke holes in the witness’s analysis or point out contradictions. However, I eventually learned that my contributions were not appreciated. As the hearings are a sham and voting instruction are determined by executive staffers prior to the commencement of the hearing, nobody really cares what evidence comes out or how it stands up to cross-examination. The entire process is a farcical show. Accordingly, the executive staffers would prefer it if members simply lobbed softball questions to supportive witness, rather than giving any more of the committee’s limited time to unsupportive witnesses.

      The entire committee process is micromanaged by executive staffers to the extent that the committee members are often little more than their puppets. As a result, there is no separation of powers between legislative committees and the executive.