By Brian Staples, JUSTnews, Vol. 18, No. 2. Winter 2014-2015
Prorogations of Parliament. Other governments have prorogued Parliament many times. But Harper’s prorogations were seen as more crassly motivated for political gain than others. His second prorogation brought thousands of demonstrators to the streets to decry his disregard for the democratic way. The demonstrations did not serve to elevate the prime minister’s respect for Parliament.
Challenging Constitutional Precepts. During the coalition crisis of 2008, Harper rejected the principle that says a government continues in office so long as it enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons. To the disbelief of those with a basic grasp of how the system works, he announced that opposition leader Stéphane Dion “does not have the right to take power without an election.”
Abuse of Parliamentary Privilege. Harper refused a House of Commons request to turn over documents on the Afghan detainees’ affair until forced to do so by the Speaker, who ruled he was in breach of parliamentary privilege. Later, he refused to submit to a parliamentary request, this time on the costing of his programs. The unprecedented contempt of Parliament rulings followed.
Scorn for Parliamentary Committees. Parliamentary committees play a central role in the system as a check on executive power. The Conservatives issued their committee heads a 200-page handbook on how to disrupt these committees, going so far as to say they should flee the premises if the going got tough. The prime minister also reneged on a promise to allow committees to select their own chairs. In another decision decried as anti-democratic, he issued an order dictating that staffers to cabinet ministers do not have to testify before committees.
Lapdogs as watchdogs: Jean Chrétien drew much criticism, but also much help for his cause, as a result of his installing a toothless ethics commissioner. The Harper Conservatives have upped the anti-democratic ante, putting in place watchdogs – an ethics commissioner, lobbying commissioner, and others – who are more like lapdogs.
The foremost example was integrity commissioner Christiane Ouimet, who was pilloried in an inquiry by the auditor general. During her term of office, 227 whistleblowing allegations were brought before Ouimet. None was found to be of enough merit to require redress. The Prime Minister’s Office saw to it that she left her post quietly last fall with a $500,000 exit payment replete with a gag order.
The Patronage Machine. Harper initially surprised everyone with a good proposal to reduce the age-old practice of patronage. It was the creation of an independent public appointments commission. But after his first choice of chairman for the body was turned down by opposition parties, he abandoned, in an apparent fit of pique, the whole commission idea.
Since that time he has become, like other PMs before, a patronage dispenser of no hesitation. Mr. Harper also had good intentions on Senate reform but it, too, has remained a patronage pit. One of his first moves as PM was to elevate a senator, Michael Fortier, to his cabinet.
Abuse of Process – Omnibus Bills. Another infringement of democracy came with the 2010 behemoth budget bill – 894 pages and 2,208 clauses. It contained many important measures, such as major changes to environmental assessment regulations, that had no business being in a budget bill. Previous governments hadn’t gone in for this type of budget-making. The opposition had reason to allege abuse of process.
The Vetting System. In an extraordinary move, judged by critics to be more befitting a one-party state, Harper ordered all government communications to be vetted by his office or the neighbouring Privy Council Office. Even the most harmless announcements (Parks Canada’s release on the mating season of the black bear, for example) required approval from the top. Never had Ottawa seen anything approaching this degree of control.
Public Service Brought to Heel. Harper, who suspected the bureaucracy had a built-in Liberal bias, stripped the public service of much of its policy development functions and reduced it to the role of implementer.
The giant bureaucracy and diplomatic corps chafed under the new system. Their expertise had been valued by previous governments.
Access to Information. The government impeded the access to information system, one of the more important tools of democracy, to such an extent that the government’s information commissioner wondered whether the system would survive. Prohibitive measures included eliminating a giant data base called CAIRS, delaying responses to access requests, imposing prohibitive fees on requests, and putting pressure on bureaucrats to keep sensitive information hidden. In addition, the redacting or blacking out of documents that were released reached outlandish proportions. In one instance, the government blacked out portions of an already published biography of Barack Obama.
Suppression of Research. Research, empirical evidence, erudition might normally be considered central to the healthy functioning of democracies. The Conservatives sometimes openly challenged the notion.
At the Justice Department they freely admitted they weren’t interested in what empirical research told them about some of their anti-crime measures. At Environment Canada, public input on climate change policy was dramatically reduced.
In other instances, the government chose to camouflage evidence that ran counter to its intentions. A report of the Commissioner of Firearms saying police made good use of the gun registry was deliberately hidden beyond its statutory deadline, until after a vote on a private member’s bill on the gun registry.
The most controversial measure involving suppression of research was the Harper move against the long-form census. The less the people knew, the easier it was to deceive them.
Document Tampering. It was the Bev Oda controversy involving the changing of a document on the question of aid to the church group Kairos that captured attention. But this was by no means an isolated occurrence.
During the election campaign, Conservative operatives twisted the words of Auditor General Sheila Fraser to try to make it sound like she was crediting them with prudent spending when, in fact, what she actually wrote applauded the Liberals. Fraser rebelled, whereupon even her releases would be monitored by central command.
The Conservatives got caught putting their own party logos on stimulus funding cheques, which were paid out of the public purse. They were forced to cease the practice.
Media Curbs. Though having stated that information is the lifeblood of democracy, the Prime Minister went to unusual lengths to deter media access. He never held open season press conferences, wouldn’t inform the media of the timing of cabinet meetings, as was traditionally done, limited their access to the bureaucracy, and had his war room operatives (using false names) write online posts attacking journalists. In one uncelebrated incident in Charlottetown in 2007, the Conservatives sent the police to remove reporters from a hotel lobby where they were trying to cover a party caucus meeting.
This is part of a list of problems the Harper government is creating, compiled by Brian Staples, from Edmonton Journal news clippings and materials from Lawrence Martin and John Ibbitson, September 7, 2012. These points specifically address democracy. More recent iniquities are missing.
Harper’s Abuse of Power
By Andrew Coyne, JUSTnews, Vol. 18, No. 2. Winter 2014-2015
Time was when we had to wait weeks, even months for each new abuse of power by the Harper government. Now those abuses arrive by the day, sometimes two and three at a time.
The Prostitution Bill. The Supreme Court having tossed out the old laws as a violation of prostitutes’ constitutional right not to be beaten or murdered (I paraphrase), it was expected the government would opt for the “Nordic model,” criminalizing the purchase of sex rather than the sale, as a replacement – a contentious but tenable response to the Court’s decision. It was not expected the government would, in effect, fling the ruling back in the Court’s face. Not content with leaving the impugned provisions, but for a few cosmetic changes, essentially intact, the government imposed new restrictions, for example banning prostitutes from advertising: not just in violation of the Constitution, it would seem, but in defiance of it. The bill is written as if calculated to provoke another confrontation with the Court, ideally in time for the next election.
The Cyber-bullying Bill. At least, that’s what it was sold as: legislation making it a crime to post revealing images of someone online without their consent, for which the government deserves praise. But nothing comes free with this gang. Tacked onto the bill is a number of other unrelated measures – among others, one that would make it easier for police and other authorities to obtain customers’ personal data from Internet and telephone providers, without a warrant – easier that is, than it already is, which is plenty.
The New Privacy Commissioner. Of all the people the government might have picked to replace the outgoing commissioner, it chose Daniel Therrien, a top lawyer in the Department of Justice known for his work on security and public safety issues: exactly the sort of person the privacy commissioner is supposed to keep tabs on. Worse, of six people on the selection committee’s short-list, Therrien placed sixth. The committee might as well not have bothered.
The F-35 Contract. In the wake of the auditor general’s findings that it had deliberately understated the true costs of the sole-source purchase of 65 “next generation” fighter jets – initially presented as costing just $9 billion, the correct figure, operating costs included, is now estimated at $45 billion – and in the face of growing doubts about the mission, specifications and performance of the plane, the government agreed to review the purchase, perhaps even open it up to competitive bidding. It is now reported, 18 months later, that the review will recommend buying the same plane, on the same terms – without competition.
And more… And those are just the highlights. In the past week [June 1st, 2014] we’ve also learned that the government is monitoring “all known demonstrations” in the country, with all departments directed to send reports to a central registry; that the information commissioner has reported a one-third increase in complaints the government is blocking or delaying access to information requests; that a Liberal MP was secretly taped, allegedly by an intern in the Minister of Justice’s office, making embarrassing remarks about his leader.
Power Corrupts
Several themes run throughout these complaints: a contempt for civil liberties, for due process, for established convention, and for consultation for openness. This has been replaced throughout by a culture of secrecy, control, expedience and partisan advantage. Worse, there is virtually nothing anyone can do about it. All governments have displayed some of these traits. If this government has pushed things further, it is because it can: because we have so centralized power in the Prime Minister’s Office, with few constraints or countervailing powers.
Where this has lately come to a head is in the appointments process. For in Canada, uniquely, the prime minister’s powers of appointment extend not only to all who serve beneath him, but to every one of the offices that might be expected to hold him in check. He appoints the Governor General, all the senators, and every member of the Supreme Court; the governor of the Bank of Canada, all the deputy ministers, and every Crown corporation president; the top military officers, the heads of the security services, and the commissioner of the RCMP; plus all of the officers of Parliament I’ve mentioned and several more besides. And those are in addition to the already vast powers of appointment with which he rules over members of Parliament: not only cabinet, but all the parliamentary secretaries and all the committee chairs as well.
This would be worrisome enough even if the process were immaculate and the quality of appointments uniformly high. But what we’ve been seeing lately is a series of puzzling, troublesome and downright incompetent appointments: the parade of senators now in various stages of trouble with the law; the ill-starred promotion of Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court (his successor, Clement Gascon, was better received, but without even the pretense of parliamentary scrutiny that attended Nadon); the conversion of what had been an arm’s-length process for choosing the Bank of Canada governor into the personal pick of the Finance minister; the selection of Arthur Porter – Arthur Porter – to chair the Security Intelligence Review Committee. The Therrien appointment seems almost benign in comparison. His people have done their best to smear and demean the auditor general, the parliamentary budget officer and the chief electoral officer.
Appointees Rebel
It is ironic that so many of the prime minister’s appointees have proved disruptive of his designs: Senators have defied the whip, Supreme Court judges have ruled against his legislation. We have vested far too much power in one man, with results we can now plainly see.
James Andrew Coyne is a Canadian political columnist with the National Post and a member of the At Issue panel on CBC. Previously, he has been national editor for Maclean’s and a columnist with The Globe and Mail.
From “Who We Are”
By Elizabeth May
This is a book about how we got where we are today – a decent country of immense potential, suddenly on the wrong side of history…. How a parliamentary system could be so degraded that it now more resembles an elected dictatorship than a healthy democracy… This is a book about how to fix what is wrong, rescue democracy from hyperpartisan policies, and put Canada and the world, on the path to a secure post-carbon economy. We have a…leadership vacuum. I invite you – I invite all of you – to fill it.
From Who We Are, pages 6-7
