Parliament adjourned on Wednesday, June 23
following a session replete with incoherent
legislation and crisis-ridden self-serving
proceedings. It is scheduled to reconvene on
September 20 but nothing is certain because
speculation abounds that the Trudeau
government will call a federal election before
that. Even so, an hour before adjournment, the
Liberals presented new so-called anti-hate
legislation, with the additional threat of
more social-media regulation to come. It is
intended to permit the government to use its
police powers to curb freedom of speech when
it comes to the right of the people to speak
and communicate their views, thoughts and
opinions about matters of concern to the
polity, while giving a green light to
authorities at various levels to defame and
criminalize people who refuse to toe the line
the authorities have summarily declared
comprises Canadian values.
Throughout this session of Parliament, the
government has engaged in many self-serving
shenanigans in order to skew the playing field
in its favour should an election be called.
This brings the serious concern before the
electorate of how it should respond to its own
advantage, not that of the system of cartel
party government whose main aim is to keep the
people disempowered.
The Liberals standing in the Parliament with
the recent organized defection of a Green
Party MP to the Liberals, is 155 of the 338
total MPs. This is 15 short of a majority
meaning a lot of manoeuvering is going on to
get what they call star candidates and to make
sure candidates for the opposition parties are
knocked out of the running in various ways.
The minority Liberal government has been able
to get its legislation adopted primarily with
the support of the 32 Bloc Québécois and 24
NDP members.
Meanwhile, to make sure the Liberals control
the Senate, on June 22 Trudeau announced his
latest appointments to the "red chamber" which
are plum positions given for services
rendered. The new appointees are Hassan
Yussuff, Bernadette Clement and James Quinn.
Yussuf, until three days prior to his
appointment was president of the Canadian
Labour Congress and much praised for
supporting the Liberals in free trade
negotiations that cripple the working class in
the U.S., Canada and Mexico in myriad ways.
Clement is the former Mayor of Cornwall,
Ontario, a crucial border crossing with the
U.S. that lies on Indigenous land. Quinn is
President and Chief Executive Officer of the
Saint John Port Authority which, according to
its website, is "eastern Canada's largest port
by volume," and "has a diverse cargo base,
handling an average of 28 million metric
tonnes of cargo annually, including dry and
liquid bulks, break bulk, and containers." It
boasts that "with global connections to 500
ports worldwide, Port Saint John is easily
connected to central Canadian inland markets
by rail and road" and that it is "a
facilitator of trade, providing a marine
gateway to global markets."
The appointment of these three people as
Senators brings the total number appointed by
the Liberals in two terms of office to 55.
This means the Liberal Party appointments now
command a majority in the Chamber even though
Liberal Senators are said to be independent.
Twelve of the 105 Senate seats remain vacant.
The bills pushed to the Senate before the
House ended its session included Bill C-6, an
act amending the Criminal Code
concerning conversion therapy; Bill C-10, An
Act to Amend the Broadcasting Act; Bill
C-12, An Act respecting transparency and
accountability in Canada's efforts to
achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by
the year 2050; and Bill C-30, An Act
to implement certain provisions of the
budget tabled in Parliament on April 19,
2021 and other measures.
The pressure on the Senate to push these laws
through, raised a drama of opposition because
of the last minute delivery to the Senators.
This is particularly so with Bill C-10 where
there is a controversy about whether or not
social-media posts by individuals will now be
regulated and controlled through algorithms
that the government wants to see on social
media platforms in the name of promoting the
discoverability of Canadian content. The
opposition in the Senate alleges that it
constitutes a threat to freedom of speech and
also objects to the manner in which the
legislation was rushed through the lower
house.
The depths to
which Parliamentary proceedings have sunk is
shown by the fact Bill C-10 reached the Senate
without anyone in either the House or the
Senate being able to provide a definitive
statement on its content or impact. Julie
Dabrusin, the Parliamentary Secretary to the
Minister of Canadian Heritage says that Bill
C-10 "specifically excludes contents uploaded
by users" while others, including broadcasting
law expert Michael Geist, maintain it does
not. In this vein, Senator Pamela Wallin
insisted in the Senate that the "Facebook
posts, YouTube posts and all of that is
subject to discoverability by big tech," to
which Senator Dennis Dawson said this was not
the case. "Trust me: It does not apply to
people. It applies to organizations. People's
freedom of speech and expression will not be
altered by this bill," he said. This is
contradicted by the experience of many whose
posts have been blocked or who have themselves
received lifetime bans from using the medium
at issue, even without Bill C-10 and the
further threatened regulatory powers to
monitor and control speech on the internet.
What is clear from the complex bill is that
it is legislation that significantly expands
the regulatory powers of the Canadian
Radio-Telecommunications Commission and the
Cabinet, with many provisions in it simply
deferring to directives to be issued by the
Cabinet as to how the Commission will conduct
its regulatory powers. It is a concentration
of unfettered policy-making powers in fewer
and fewer hands. Another name for unfettered
policy-making powers is police powers.
In the end, notwithstanding the Liberal
predominance in the Senate, it refused to
fast-track the new Broadcasting Act
and the conversion therapy legislation,
choosing to refer it to committee instead.
Irrationality Prevails
Another matter which shows the extent of the
irrationality that prevails concerns how an
election is to be conducted should one be
called during a pandemic.
In October
2020, Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane
Perrault requested amendments to the Canada
Elections Act that would address health
and safety concerns should an election be
called during the pandemic. Bill C-19, An
Act to amend the Canada Elections Act
(COVID-19 response) was tabled in
December. The Committee on Procedures and
House Affairs (PROC) tabled its report and
final amendments to Bill C-19 two days before
the scheduled summer recess, but it was not
selected as priority legislation by the
Liberals.
The House of Commons' handling of the
legislation not only reveals utter disregard
for the health and safety of electors and
election workers, but the ease with which one
hand contradicts what the other is doing. In
May 2021, members of the House of Commons
unanimously adopted a motion declaring that an
election should not be called until the
pandemic is over. Unanimous means it included
the Liberals. Some MPs went so far as to argue
that the motion was excellent because it would
provide more time for PROC to study Bill C-19
-- the very bill enacting the conditions for
an election during a pandemic.
Bill C-19 also reveals a contempt for
Elections Canada, as it supplants the agency's
expert advice with largely unexplained party
preferences. If it had been passed, Bill C-19
would have extended polling from a single
12-hour day of voting on Monday to three
12-hour days on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
This would have been done even though
Elections Canada requested eight-hour days on
Saturday and Sunday to address the
difficulties of hiring 250,000 election
workers for 12-hour days during a pandemic,
most of whom are seniors. Elections Canada
also argued that the two-day weekend voting
would assist in securing polling locations
that would facilitate physical distancing.
Even after the head of Elections Canada,
Stéphane Perrault, appeared before PROC a
second time to reiterate his reasons, PROC
members stuck to their own preferences.
Elections Canada was left with no option but
to announce that it expects to be prepared to
conduct elections safely, using the existing
adaptive powers of the Chief Electoral Officer
to address problems that arise related to the
health and safety of electors and election
workers.
Coincidentally, right after Parliament
adjourned, the restrictions on public
gatherings started being lifted with
complicated guidelines issued of what is safe
and what is not. This has further fuelled
speculation that an election can be called
because pandemic conditions allegedly no
longer exist.
This article was published in
Volume 51 Number 7 - July 4, 2021
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2021/Articles/M510071.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
