This legislation began as a private members bill from Conservative backbencher Michael Chong. It was designed to increase the independence of MPs by introducing a series of changes that would reduce somewhat the overwhelming power of the party leader. Initially, the bill proposed to strip the party leader of the power to sign a candidate’s nomination papers and to give the caucus increased powers including the ability to remove the leader. It was watered down in several respects in an effort to gain support, especially from the Conservatives, and ultimately was passed by a wide margin in February of this year.
One might reasonably expect the Chong bill to receive prompt attention and fairly quick resolution in the Senate. It is a short and straightforward bill that received extensive consideration in the Commons over a long period of time before being overwhelmingly approved with support from all parties. This bill does not affect the Senate or its operations, nor does it affect the Canadian public – except to the extent that passage of the bill would provide one very small step in freeing up MPs so that they could act on behalf of their constituents and not just as puppets of the party to which they belong.
But the Chong bill has received very little debate in the Senate and has not yet been referred to a committee for study. It now seems increasingly likely that the bill will not be passed before it is effectively killed when Parliament dissolves for the upcoming federal election. If that is the bill’s fate, it is hard to reach any other conclusion than that the government used its majority in the Senate to reject a bill that it didn’t want but had felt obliged to support in the Commons after it had repeatedly been watered down to gain that support.
#2. Bill C-51: The Anti-terrorism Act
This very controversial piece of government legislation was pushed through the House of Commons at a hurried pace, with the widespread concerns about threats to civil liberties and to the Charter pushed aside and ridiculed. The committee examining the bill somehow heard from 49 external witnesses over a total of only 16 hours. This impressive efficiency was helped by the fact that Conservative members of the committee asked only 25 questions about specific provisions in the bill. Only three of these questions were directed to critics of the bill, who were otherwise largely ignored. The concerns raised by 12 Canadian privacy commissioners were ignored and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada was not even allowed to appear before the committee. All of the more than 100 amendments proposed by the opposition parties were rejected by the Conservative-dominated committee.
Bill C-51 contrasts with the Chong legislation in every conceivable fashion. It is not simple or straightforward. It was not considered over a leisurely time frame with numerous changes made along the way to accommodate concerns that were raised. Instead, it was forced through the House of Commons in a very high-handed fashion. It is a bill with potentially far-reaching impact on Canadian citizens and has raised a great number of concerns about its possible impact on civil liberties and individual freedoms. If ever a bill called for sober second thought from the Senate, this is it. Yet in contrast to the Senate’s extremely leisurely approach to the passage of the Chong legislation, Bill C-51 is apparently being fast-tracked and there seems little doubt that the Senate will give it passage before the election. A majority of the Senators are Conservative and have shown themselves (notably with respect to the ongoing Mike Duffy saga) to be subservient to directions from the Prime Minister and the PMO.
The leader of the opposition in the Senate has announced his intention to vote against Bill C-51 if changes cannot be made and he expects many other opposition members to do the same. These are former Liberal Senators who were officially declared “Independent Senators” by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau in January 2014. They no longer sit with the elected members in the Liberal caucus and are free to vote as they see fit. In this instance, it would appear that most of them will vote against the legislation even though it was supported by the Liberal members of the House of Commons.
The cynical or conspiratorial reader could argue that this is just a case of (formerly) Liberal Senators voting against legislation that many Liberals believe their party should not have supported in the House of Commons. However, there is nothing to suggest that any such direction was given by the Liberal Party. A more plausible explanation is that these opposition Senators simply find the legislation unacceptable in its present form and, as Independent Members, they are free to vote their conscience. One can’t help wondering what the outcome would be if many more Senators were free of their party strictures and able to consider legislation on its own merits. Would the badly flawed bill C-51 still get a free ride? Would the modest and much-admired Reform Act still fall victim to delaying tactics?