Huntsville Doppler
Some time ago, in a mandate letter to members of his Cabinet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote this:
“The trust of Canadians will also rest on the accountability of our Government. In our system, the highest manifestation of democratic accountability is the forum of Parliament.”
Last week, aided and abetted by a deal with the New Democratic Party, who only demonstrated how cheaply they could be bought, the Prime Minister effectively shut down Parliament and its ability to provide oversight and accountability.
Stephen Gordon is a contributing writer for the Globe and Mail and a professor of economics at Laval University. This is what he had to say about the NDP helping the Government to neuter Parliament: “Dammit. I voted for the NDP because I thought they’d provide useful and much-needed oversight over a Liberal government. If I’d wanted another rubber stamp, I’d have voted Liberal.”
The first time around, a few months ago, when the Trudeau Government tried to slip a diminishment of Parliament into a pandemic aid bill, they didn’t get away with it. This time they did, through a deal with the NDP which will cost them nothing.
The NDP want a ten-day, fully paid sick leave policy for all workers in Canada and the Government promised to support such a move, even though it interferes with provincial jurisdiction and will be ultimately paid for by employers, in exchange for the NDP’s support to muzzle Parliament.
The effect, especially on small business owners, would be serious. One machine shop owner with six employees pointed out that the ten-day sick leave deal the NDP cut with the Liberals to “suspend” Parliament, would cost him over twelve thousand dollars in direct wage loss and, in addition, more than forty thousand dollars in billable hours “just so Trudeau can avoid accountability”.
I am not a critic of either Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or of Ontario Premier Doug Ford in relation to their COVID-19 leadership. Both have been effective. But while daily exposure through press conferences, with generally favourable media and usually a goodie or two to give out, may be good politics and will inevitably spike up the polling numbers, it is not in itself effective accountability. It is more like show and tell. I, for one, am getting a little tired of it.
And it is the politics that bothers me. I see two threads running through this pandemic in Canada. The first is the management of the COVID-19 crisis. That gets pretty high marks from me. The second is an effort, especially at the federal level, to use the pandemic to further political goals, to seek more power, and to duck accountability.
That is not particularly surprising and, yes, given the opportunity perhaps any government, even a Conservative one, would be tempted. But I still don’t like it and I still don’t think it is right. It is the reason why the greater the crisis the more need there is for a strong and vigilant Parliament. That to me is the essence of democracy.
It is my view that the federal Liberal Party is gearing up for a snap election on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, less than a year after the last one. The signs are there. I have been in too many political war rooms over the years not to see them. And it is a lot easier to do when there is no Parliament in the way to keep you in check.
Although many spending initiatives announced by the Trudeau Government during the pandemic were necessary, some were not. Among them were gifts and giveaways to people who did not need them, did not ask for them, but would be grateful to receive them. Pure politics.
Another sure sign of election readiness is the summoning of Gerald Butts back to Ottawa after an absence from the PMO related to the SNC scandal. The cover story is that he will advise the Prime Minister on environmental issues, an area where he does have some expertise. The overriding reason is an election. That is Butt’s thing. He has been a trusted and senior political advisor to the prime minister and to former Ontario premier, Dalton McGuinty. He is a war room specialist. He has been called back for a reason.
Parliament is scheduled to reconvene on September 21. My guess is that it will not sit again in any manner that provides reasonable oversight and accountability until at least the end of this year and perhaps well into 2021. This particular minority Parliament may never sit again.
The Trudeau Government is riding high in the polls as is the Conservative Government in Ontario, primarily because of their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ford has a majority government, Trudeau does not. The federal Conservatives are effectively leaderless, and their polling numbers are in freefall. My bet is that the prime minister will take advantage of all of this in an attempt to leapfrog into a majority government on the back of the pandemic. That, in my view, is a forecast for another four years of uncontrolled spending and economic chaos.
In my view, this is not a time for political manoeuvring. I guess it is a good strategy if power is more important than actual performance.
Suspending Parliament or reducing its capacity to provide effective oversight may be in the best interest of the current Government while they develop a strategy to achieve a majority.
It is not, however, in the best interest of Canadians.
Hugh Mackenzie
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Gord Danks says
Mr Mackenzie
Thank goodness the current liberal government is in a minority situation and not a majority during this terrible time.They are force to work with others.Can you imagine how a government could subvert our democracy and parliamentary process to force through their legislative agenda by prorogation of parliament? O wait! Isn’t that what Stephen Harper’s Conservative government did? I wonder Mr. Mackenzie were you as concern at that time for our Democracy?
Excuse my sarcasm!
My point is l don’t care for the partisan nature of our current democratic process. Conservatives, Liberal, or other, each has an ideology they attempt to force on others. With this pandemic and the emerging social and racial strife in America and beyond we need more then ever to come together to cooperate and find a better way to govern ourselves to the benefit of all.Dare l say democratic reform is needed?
Mr Mackenzie why is paid sick days for employees such a terrible thing? As far as the cost to employers if set up properly that additional cost could be recouped through improve productivity. By having ill people go to work,who can’t afford to take time off they spread their illness(current situation) to others, and cause more absenteeism. As far as abuse that can be addressed as well through incentives.It would appear in our area most businesses survived the minimum wage increases and l am sure most could provide sick days for their employees.Happy and healthy workers are productive workers! I as a customer to a business would be willing to pay more for a service or product knowing l wasn’t at risk of contracting an illness from the employee serving me.(once again, current situation)
Just some thoughts. I enjoy reading the articles in the doppler. Thank you
Jim Boyes says
To Gord Danks,
It is pretty clear you have never employed workers especially unionized. Give them 5 days, they’ll take 5 days, increase it to 10 and they’ll consider that an entitlement be enjoyed. It is human nature.
A small business can’t support this kind of behaviour.
It needs to be said that your simplistic, glib and trite cliches such as ” happy and healthy workers are productive workers” add nothing to what should be a serious debate.
As for the need for democratic reform, I’d suggest democracy would be best served if we had fixed election dates with the only exception being a defeat of the sitting government on a confidence or money bill. Democracy is not well served if a prime minister can call an election any time simply to take advantage of a political situation in a minority government.
In such a situation the Governor General should be required to request the leader of the opposition to attempt to form a government.
The current minority prime minister, even having not received a majority vote and clinging to power only with the support of the NDP has spent an unprecedented amount of money and driven the country into shocking debt mostly without proper parliamentary oversight. If Canadians give a damn about their democracy they should be up in arms over this and the effective shut down of their parliament. As it is Canadians are aquiesing to a sort of dictatorship. It is folly and indicative of indifference and I fear ignorance.
We are all weary of the pandemic and just as weary of our obligatory daily exposure to Trudeau’s growing hair (including the artfully positioned curl occasionally allowed to misbehave onto his furrowed brow.)
Social distancing, isolation and general worry have beaten us all down. Any government which imposes a self serving and unnecessary election onto a weary population deserves a resounding defeat.
Let it be.
Dave Stewart says
To Gord Danks.
My sentiments exactly.
And when do we find out who is getting the $600 million press subsidy ?
John K. Davis says
To Jim Boyes,
Well said, you are old enough to remember when teachers had to have their sick days limited to six months to get them to stay home when sick. Their union negotiated that they could carryover sick days and use them to shorten the number of years they had to work before retiring, by taking all of these sick days in a row, some over a years worth and more. These sick days become floating holidays often used to give workers a long weekend whenever they feel like it. You can’t tell me this doesn’t reduce productivity They will still go to work sick, so as to not use their extra holidays. Every worker is entitled to 4% vacation pay paid by their employer. If really sick these can be used by the worker to keep from losing pay.
People not showing up for their shift often costs the company more than just their sick day, they now need to pay another worker to work overtime at 1.5 or 2 times their normal pay to cover for the missing worker.
What about the owners of these small businesses? Will the government be paying their 10 sick days to them. These people collect the HST and pay someone to track this and submit it to the government with no compensation what-so-ever for their added costs.
Regarding the Trudeau Show, are the Liberals spending their time not in the house, figuring out what goody to give away on tomorrow’s Trudeau Show?
I am now very tired of this election campaign, where one new promised announcement is rolled out every day on Trudeau’s virtual election tour. .
Erin Jones says
Interesting observations, Hugh.
Small businesses are not at all favored by those who wish to be powerful and in control of the masses. Both of the totalitarian ideologies—socialism/communism on one hand and fascism, on the other—seek to control all means of production and small business gets in the way of that. Small business people have a level of autonomy that cannot be tolerated by the purveyors of “pick-your-poison” total control. With socialism/communism (Lenin said that the goal of socialism was communism), the massive bureaucracy that it spawns, peers into and restricts every aspect of life. George Orwell (who was a socialist himself) wrote his cautionary novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in response to a dystopian future that he knew could grow out of socialism. Free enterprise is essential to a productive economy but socialism ignores that. The Russians used to have a saying when the country was under the control of Soviet socialists: “We pretend to work and the government pretends to pay us.”
Alternatively, fascism seeks to control through a marriage of the mega-corporations and government. (Mussolini’s shorthand definition of fascism). The novel, “Brave New World” depicts such a world. The stifling of free speech by the info-technology giants is an example of how the corporations can be used to promote the political agenda of the elites who own them, in cooperation with the elites in government.
Extremely high levels of corruption are endemic to either type of totalitarianism and the human rights of the average citizen are abridged. They are two sides of the same coin. If we are going to have an election soon, one hopes that conserving one’s freedom and autonomy would be a high priority in the minds of the voters. That, in turn, should lead one to vote for the party which seeks to preserve small business and not mega-corporations or mega-government.
Ray Vowels says
It’s very easy for the liberal Govt to give money out as if it grew on trees just to make the prime minister look good. What a lot of people don’t understand is it’s not costing him a penny he will still be a millionaire when this is all over and he starts to tax us even more then he is now just to pay the interest on all the loans. All this is going to fall on the back’s of the working people if there is anyone left working when they decide to open things back up. What we don’t need right now is anther election but we do need a parliament sitting to keep things under control a bit at least until we can get a conservative party leader that has a chance of getting Trudeau out of power.
Sandy McLennan says
Jim Boyes: “Give them 5 days, they’ll take 5 days, increase it to 10 and they’ll consider that an entitlement be enjoyed. It is human nature.”
Evidence, statistics please. In my 30 years’ work experience I saw very few people behave this way. By far most did not. Or my human nature. Regardless of the administrative context, best if workers have the capacity to stay home when ill.
Ray Vowels: “we do need a parliament sitting to keep things under control a bit at least until we can get a Conservative party leader that has a chance of getting Trudeau out of power.”
Hugh: “if power is more important than actual performance”
If?
I’m for Parliament convening, no snap election, electoral reform and the end of political parties. Oh, and a pass on totalitarianism. And I don’t agree that socialism ignores free enterprise. Sweden, anyone?
Erin Jones says
Hi Sandy,
Sweden is not a socialist country. The government of Sweden actually protested to U.S. politician, Bernie Sanders, “Stop calling us a socialist government. We are NOT socialist.” Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries could more fairly be described as “compassionately capitalistic”. Canada could also be described that way as well. Yes, we have social programs and they are good things, but it is important to make sure that we are not destroying free enterprise with unreasonable regulation and taxation. That is why small business always has and always will be vital as a barometer for the well-being of the people as a whole. When small business has “the deck stacked against them” all the people suffer. When small business flourishes, freedom and prosperity are increased.
Karen A. Insley says
Erin Jones succinctly described the forces of socialism/communism/facsism that’s been exerted in Canada since the Cold War called “active measures”. It is said, that the Canadian people have been without a Constitution since William Lyon Mackenzie replaced the British Queen’s letters patent for”Govenor General”(GG) appointment with his own. Hence, forevermore power rests totally with PMs as they have appointed every GG since & this flows through to appointing LT. G in each Province. The latter must sign for all provincial legislative authorities! So, where is the oversight? The Charter’s not the people’s, it is an act of Parliament that gives politicians total control. We, the people, did not vote for this in 1982. So, if this discussion has conveniently been subverted by power drunk politicians, here’s the crux, who really does represent the people democratically? Extrapolating further, the foundation of our Country, was/is based on #MagnaCarta. Even with the Queen’s release of Canada to a Sovereign nation in 1931, the basis of it applies today! Is it Time to #cleanthesilt and construct a real Constitution for the people of Canada, & not the politicians? Today demonstrates it is good to make it so, enshrining the values for individual freedom, opportunity, respect, fairness, & private property rights as foundations for each full Canadian citizen!
Paul Whillans says
The average small business in Canada spends approximately 30% of their revenue on staffing. Ten days of sick leave therefore represents an added cost of 4% of 30% which adds 1.2% increase to the cost of business. Small potatoes which reap the benefit of a $14 billion preferential tax treatment per year (Globe and Mail: July 23, 2019) as compared large corporations. The Small Business “woes” are built on myth and a incredible lobbying campaign…..I think it is time to pony up
Erin Jones says
Have you ever tried to create and maintain a small business, Paul?