A wildly unrepresentative electoral system is one of the factors that could be hurtling the country toward another unity crisis.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Bill C-15, “An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget,” is 634 pages long. It creates four new Acts, repeals six more, and amends at least 45 others, on matters ranging from stablecoins to broadcasting to the marketing of freshwater fish.
It is, in short, an omnibus bill, the sort with which we have grown all too familiar in recent years. Rather than consider each piece of legislation on its own merits, members of Parliament will be forced to vote up or down on the lot, after only the briefest scrutiny – a few days at most – in committee.
But C-15’s assault on Parliament is not limited to its size and breadth. Buried deep in the bill is a provision (section 208 of Division 5 of Part 5, amending sections 11 and 12 of the Red Tape Reduction Act) allowing any minister to exempt any “entity” from any provision of any law for which the minister is responsible, for a period of up to three years (renewable to six). The only exception is the Criminal Code, for which I suppose we should be thankful.
The purpose is supposedly to “encourage innovation,” which may or may not prove to be the result. But such a sweeping provision, granting ministers such licence to ignore the will of Parliament and with such obvious potential for abuse – not for nothing is it referred to as a “Henry VIII clause” – ought surely to be the subject of lengthy debate and scrutiny, should it not? I’m thinking maybe in Parliament?
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Good luck. Had the Toronto Star’s Althia Raj not flagged it, I’m not sure most MPs would even be aware it existed. And MPs have enough on their plate as it is: this is only the latest in a series of omnibus bills the Carney government has thoughtfully arranged for them, several of which contain equally onerous provisions. Among them:
- C-2, which in its original form combined draconian limits on the rights of refugee claimants with provisions granting police warrantless access to personal information on subscribers to various services, including internet and telecom providers. (Another bill was later introduced with the latter provision removed, though C-2 has not been withdrawn.)
- C-4, which combines a proposal to cut the lowest rate of income tax, at a cost of billions in revenue, with a measure (how exquisitely convenient) exempting political parties from provincial and federal privacy legislation.
- C-5, now enacted, which combines a law removing certain federal barriers to interprovincial trade with another Henry VIII clause allowing ministers to exempt certain projects from all sorts of regulatory requirements, at their discretion.
Then there’s Bill C-9, which is not an omnibus bill like the others, but which does make it far too easy to prosecute people for a broad range of ill-defined “hate crimes”, and which some opposition parties want to make even broader.
If you are detecting a pattern – contempt for the powers of Parliament, the rule of law, and the rights of the individual – you should know that the Carney government is hardly alone in this regard. Everywhere you look, you find fresh reminders of the decay of liberal democratic norms in this country.
Look to Alberta, where the Prime Minister’s new best friend, Danielle Smith, has introduced a sheaf of bills that would suspend Charter protection for transgender people, prevent political rivals from using certain words or information in their campaigns, and attempted to pre-empt a judicial ruling that a referendum question proposed by a separatist organization is in violation of the Premier’s own referendum legislation.
Look to British Columbia, whose Conservative Party is the latest to find itself hostage to a leader who, despite having manifestly lost the support of the party – at the peak of festivities, a majority of the caucus signed letters demanding his resignation – refused to quit. As with Justin Trudeau, as with Jean Chrétien, John Rustad was eventually persuaded to step down, but – as with Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Chrétien – only after months of chaos and drift.
Look to Quebec, where the polls show the Parti Québécois heading for a massive majority in the next provincial election. Well, the polls show the party with a little more than a third of the vote. But combine Quebec’s fragmented political landscape – five parties have at least 8-per-cent popular support – with the accidental arithmetic of first-past-the-post, and that’s enough.
MPs unable to hold their leader to account. Parliament prevented from properly scrutinizing legislation. The Charter neutered, and the courts muzzled, for nakedly partisan purposes. And a wildly unrepresentative electoral system that is hurtling the country toward another unity crisis – or rather two. Just another week in Canadian democracy.