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Parliament Convenes to Pass Bill
C-13, the No to Secret Deals! Parliamentary Negotiations Should Be Broadcast Live!The cartel parties which have seats in the Parliament of Canada passed Bill C-13, the COVID-19 Emergency Response Act, on March 25. The bill was negotiated between the parties and with business interests and between the Premiers in secret negotiations behind the backs of Canadians. It was adopted by both the House of Commons and Senate and given Royal Assent in the name of protecting Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic. The original proposal from the Liberal Party in power was apparently reorganized after two of the cartel parties objected to its demand for two years of rule by exception. This was reduced to six months, during which the Liberal Party can spend state money without Parliamentary oversight. This is already happening, as two days later, on March 27, Prime Minister Trudeau announced changes to the wage subsidy for businesses, increasing the amount from 10 to 75 per cent. Rule by exception is emergency police powers. The Act gives the Liberal Party Cabinet executive, in particular the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, extraordinary powers to adopt measures and spend state money until September 30, 2020 without public or even parliamentary discussion or oversight.
What is known is that very little, if any, discussion of why the cartel parties agreed to give the Liberal Party executive emergency police powers has taken place. Discussion on how the needs of Canadians are to be met is reduced to disinforming the public who does not know who is deciding what, let alone participating in making the decisions. The Finance Minister has announced he is spending $6 billion a week and Canadians are left nonplussed in the face of the situation. They are forced to fend for themselves and try to learn what is happening through stories picked up randomly here and there. The backroom negotiations between the government, the cartel parties, business interests and the Premiers should be televised so that they can all be held to account.
To suggest that once the barn door has been
opened and the horses let loose Parliament can be
convened down the road and close the barn door as
if no damage has been done is a bad joke. This
chatter diverts from discussion of whose interests
are being served by this rule by exception, why
this can happen in the first place and, most
importantly, the fact that when it comes to
looking after seniors, women and children, the
Indigenous communities and urban Indigenous
populations, the homeless and all the working
people, the government is not there for them. In
these backroom negotiations only the business
interests and the premiers have the money and
means to intervene as organized forces to make
sure their interests are being looked after.
Canadians are defenceless as far as the government
goes. The refusal to involve Canadians in decision-making and the taboo on discussion of what is relevant and what is not is par for the course, but deteriorates further during rule by exception. Prime Minister Trudeau Sr. used the War Measures Act in 1970 to suppress discussion and efforts to create new nation-to-nation relations between Canada and Quebec, unleashing police powers against the people. Also, Trudeau Sr's disgraceful 1969 White Paper, entitled "Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy," proposed destroying any motion towards building respectful nation-to-nation relations with the Indigenous peoples. Trudeau Sr. and his Minister of Indian Affairs Jean Chrétien sought to abolish all previous arrangements and treaties with Indigenous peoples and "incorporate" them into Canada without upholding hereditary or treaty rights. The aim was to impose fee simple or private property relations on all Indigenous territories, without exception, so that the imperialists could seize those lands and exploit them without opposition from the Indigenous inhabitants. Even though the people mobilized massive opposition to defeat the odious White Paper, the unjust colonial line it represents remains to this day. This is evident with the continuing assault of the federal and provincial governments, RCMP and Coastal GasLink on the Indigenous Wet'suwet'en territory and its courageous Land Defenders in northern BC.
In the case of this crisis, two things are repeated to disinform Canadians. One is that the measures are all in place to protect the people and the other is that everything is being done to avert an economic meltdown. Far from accepting these as being the case, the people must establish their own reference points based on the needs of the real world as they know it so as to make sure they are not disinformed. They must keep the initiative on how all matters are dealt with in their own hands. A reader of TML Weekly commented on the issue with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic: "While the government is capable of giving instructions and then making it the responsibility of individuals to fend for themselves with some financial help on the way but not soon enough, and is capable of issuing fines and punishing those who don't comply, there is no recognition of the social responsibility of employers and government to protect the whole society by protecting the workers. The high praise for 'essential workers' and front line workers seems to have an element of hope that these workers will continue to work in unsafe conditions, putting themselves and others at risk, out of a sense of duty, without the government and employers standing up for their rights. "It ain't happening." Using the Crisis to Justify Massive Payments to
the Rich
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Of course, nothing
is known of the details of this horse-trading and
what the Liberal Party in power received in return
for shortening the term because everything was
done in secret behind closed doors. Nothing is
known of the arguments employed to suggest why the
government needed extraordinary police powers in
the first place. Was it argued that the existing
governing institutions are inadequate to deal with
the situation? Elizabeth May, an MP for the Green
Party, even insists the government should go
further and put into force the Emergencies Act,
which replaced the War Measures Act in
1988.
Discussion in the
monopoly-owned and controlled mass media has been
mostly reduced to either berating the Prime
Minister for wanting a two-year limit rather than
a shorter one or praising him for taking control
of the treasury in a manner which is out of the
people's control. It is an illusion that the
Parliament represents the interests of the people
and must therefore have what is called oversight
because this Parliament is the one horse trading
and blocking access to the information and
organization Canadians need. 
The backroom
negotiations and sweetheart deals exemplify the
typical modus operandi of floating a trial
balloon to solicit opposition and then modifying
the stand to achieve the aims it was originally
intended to achieve, and declaring it has the
consent of the governed. The action of the cartel
parties on Bill C-13, in agreeing to emergency
rule by exception so long as a sunset clause of
six months permits it to be reviewed, is
additional proof of the necessity for democratic
renewal and empowerment of the people through new
governing forms so that they can represent
themselves and serve their own interests by taking
decisions openly and publicly that affect their
lives. It is very convenient for those who serve
private interests to give themselves carte
blanche to spend money as they see fit. The
existing liberal democratic institutions are
opposed to empowering the people. The institutions
lurch from crisis to crisis pragmatically seeking
to benefit from the problems of an imperialist
world continually in crisis.
