Crisis of Westminster Parliamentary System
Cartel Parties' Three-in-One Fraud: Accountability, Corruption, Conflicts of Interest
The fall session of the 44th
Parliament showed the extent to which the Westminster
parliamentary system lies tattered and torn. Far from the House
of Commons being a forum where debate on legislation takes place
to ensure it serves the common good, as it was allegedly
intended to do when it was established in the 19th century, the
party in power's use of its privileged position means that laws
are passed without debate, that it does as it pleases and
Canadians continue to be disempowered.
The Liberal Government laid the blame for Parliament's paralysis on the Conservative "Loyal Opposition" which conducted a procedural filibuster related to the failure of the Liberals to hand over documents about public funds distributed by Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), the foundation intended to finance "green technologies," which Canada's Auditor General Karen Hogan found to be rife with conflict of interest and questionable grants. The Conservatives countered that all would be fine if the Liberals just respected the right of the House to obtain the documents, a matter of parliamentary privilege. Since motions related to parliamentary privilege take precedence over almost all other matters, the filibuster occupied a full 46 days of the session's 56-day proceedings.
While filibusters are far from uncommon, what was novel was that the Conservative filibuster delayed the passage of its own motion to produce the documents which had the support of the NDP, Bloc Québécois and Greens and could have been brought to a successful vote at any time.
Many pundits weighed in, some blaming the Liberals for not producing the documents and others blaming the Conservatives for going "too far." None of them raised that what was going on was a fraud because accountability, corruption and conflicts of interest are a three-in-one package for the cartel parties. The defunct liberal democratic institutions coddle disinformation about all three elements of the three-in-one package in which accountability is the casualty every time.
Disinformation About Accountability and Conflicts of Interest
The parliamentary privilege filibuster got underway on September 26, 2024 when Speaker of the House Greg Fergus ruled, in response to a Conservative request, that the government's refusal to hand over all SDTC documents constituted a prima facie breach of parliamentary privilege which includes access to government documents to enable the House to hold the executive to account. The Liberals had been instructed to hand over the documents in a motion adopted in the previous session by a vote of 174-148.[1]
The SDTC is operated by a private "arm's length" not-for-profit corporation set up in 2001 to distribute funds to private companies in the "green tech sector." The demand for document production was not prompted by the House of Commons scrutinizing SDTC operations but by the Auditor General's report on the $1 billion "green fund." She found that there were "significant lapses" in the distribution of public funds, including violation of conflict of interest policies 90 times and the awarding of $59 million to 10 projects that were not eligible. She also found that grant approvals frequently overstated the environmental benefits of projects. Most of the SDTC board members are Order-in-Council appointments. The Auditor-General did not find evidence of criminality per se, merely noting "the bad practices."
Taking responsibility for nothing, the Liberals shut down the foundation, with the program itself being handed over to the National Research Council so that funding could carry on.
That conflicts of interest would
be found in the administration of the SDTC funds is hardly
surprising. The 2001 legislation creating the foundation was a
neo-liberal privatization mechanism constructed to put private
interests in the form of an "arms-length" corporation "freely
and independently" in charge of distributing public funds. The
legislation actually specified that the board of directors of
the foundation had to be comprised of "persons engaged in the
development and demonstration of technologies to promote
sustainable development." Who could such persons be other than
representatives of the private interests involved in the "green
tech industry," rather than public servants with the required
expertise?
Conflict of interest was thus legally built into the SDTC's creation. To add insult to injury, the law also stipulated that the board of directors must follow conflict of interest norms. This requires recusing oneself from voting on a project when personal interests are involved, which amounts to a technical "my hands are clean" in the world of private interests collectively exercising their power and privilege. It was this failure by some board members to recuse themselves that the Auditor General found to be improper.
All of it serves the purpose of legitimizing pay-the-rich schemes. The demand of the opposition parties for documents to hold the government accountable for conflicts of interest serve the same purpose, while the government predictably gets off scot-free by handing over the responsibility to distribute the funds to the National Research Council.
The legislation which created the foundation in the first place and the impact of its decisions were not even examined in order to fulfill the requirements of parliamentary accountability. All the cartel parties feigned innocence and outrage about how such a thing could happen.
When Fergus ruled that the Liberals had violated parliamentary privilege, Conservative MP Andrew Scheer thanked him "for upholding one of the most important principles of parliamentary democracy, which is that those who are tasked with the awesome responsibility of making laws, passing taxation measures and spending money have all the information that they could possibly need to properly do their jobs."
While it is said the disclosure of the documents was required so that the Members of Parliament had the information they need to hold the government to account, the June 2024 motion that the Liberals failed to respect demanded that the SDTC documents be turned over not to the House of Commons for scrutiny, but to the RCMP. At the time of its adoption in June 2024, not one member of the House rose to call that decision out of order. Not one member of the House said, "no, no, this is our job" and proposed to remove the demand for the documents to be handed over to the police, a measure which implicitly directs the RCMP to initiate an investigation and constitutes a violation of liberal democratic norms.
MP Karina Gould, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons at the time of Speaker Fergus' ruling said it constituted "a terrible precedent." Gould is renowned for having agreed to implement the mandate assigned to her as Minister of Democratic Institutions in 2017 to put the police in charge of monitoring and overseeing elections in the name of countering foreign interference. She expressed outrage in the House, going on at length about the importance of the legislative branch and the judiciary maintaining their separation of powers, even though she had not expressed concern at the time the motion was first presented. Her handlers were clearly remiss in having failed to provide her with accurate talking points.
"Quite frankly," she told the House, "there is an abuse of the power of this place that is trampling on the Charter-protected rights of Canadians. [...] I do not know of any democracy in which politicians decide who or what is to be investigated by law enforcement. The only countries that I know of that do this are dictatorships."
The Speaker rejected her objections to his ruling on technical grounds. He said she should have raised her concerns when the motion was first adopted in June 2024 and noted that neither she nor any other Member of Parliament did so.
All of these absurd goings-on and deliberations in the House laced with talk about parliamentary concepts such as "accountability," and "holding the government to account," and "upholding the separation of the legislative from the judicial power," only succeeded in proving that they no longer have meaning.
The 45th Parliament of Canada, whenever it is convoked, is bound to be infected with the same debasement of politics. It cannot be otherwise because the destruction of politics serves to preserve the elitist status quo, taken over by oligarchic interests, by encouraging members of the polity to drop out in disgust. It has become urgent for those who recognize the need for democratic renewal to overcome this situation and not allow the cartel free rein. Doing otherwise creates a dangerous situation for the polity.
Getting together with one's peers to discuss the challenges the country faces is very important under today's circumstances. The debasement of politics by the cartel parties in both Canada and the United States puts the need to raise the level of political discourse on the agenda with workers, women and youth setting the example themselves and establishing their own program for political renewal.
Note
1. A bare minimum of legislation was adopted by the Fall Session of the 44th Parliament. Filibuster or not, the Liberal government did not appear to have an agenda it wanted to move forward. Its only concern appeared to be getting approval of the funds required for the pay-the-rich schemes in its 2024-25 budget, which was done in the most peremptory no-need-to-debate fashion.
On December 17, Bill C-79 received Royal Assent approving $21.6 billion of expenditures not previously approved. Five days earlier, the Liberals managed to get its two month "GST/HST holiday" adopted, a measure which has been viewed as contemptuous of the dire economic situation those in most need are facing. Bill C-64, the Pharmacare Act was assented to on October 10, providing for "a framework towards national universal pharmacare," with free contraception and diabetes medications as the first step.
Royal Assent was also accorded to Bill C-40, the Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission Act, which will establish an independent commission to review, investigate and decide which criminal cases should be returned to the justice system due to a potential miscarriage of justice.
In October, Bill C-76, An Act to amend the Canada National Parks Act to was adopted to transfer the authority for land-use planning from Parks Canada to the Municipality of Jasper. Also that month, Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Canada--Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts was assented to, which expands the mandates of these offshore boards to include renewable energy projects.
This article was published in
Volume 55
Number 3 - March 2025
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2025/Articles/M550032.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca