Senators join campaign to break up Conservative budget bill
The Conservative budget bill is so packed with power-grabbing extras that campaigns are mounting for the legislation to be blown apart and its individual components studied.
Senators - including Progressive Conservative Lowell Murray - environmentalists and postal workers are among the varied groups now pressuring MPs to split the 904-page budget bill just as the House of Commons is poised to pass the wide-ranging legislation.
Harper's Conservatives didn't originate the tactic but as with so many other ways of gaming the system, they seem determined to master it. Because the budget implementation legislation is a "money bill", it's a matter of confidence so voting it down would trigger the election that all the pundits insist no one wants. So the Conservatives are packing all kinds of crap in there that they would have trouble passing otherwise. (I seem to recall Mike Harris being good at these omnibus bills too.)
It draws attention to another flaw in our system: even though it's supposed to take a majority of MPs to express the will of parliament, the Prime Minister of a minority government can determine whether parliament continues to sit by jamming a poison pill into a budget bill and calling it a confidence vote. There have been ideas proposed to change that — I recall one interesting conversation in comments here that I wish I could find right now — and hopefully that discussion will continue to gain traction. Meanwhile we may yet be thankful the Senate is there before we see the back of Sideshow Stephen.
H/t to James Curran.
Sadly this is just another example of all Parties protecting their own asses rather than the people of Canada. That they would vote FOR a poison pill budget while decrying it shows they have no guts. The message is clear--we are more important than the people of Canada's rights and freedoms. Why point fingers at Harper--they are all the same.
But then, maybe the voting public should be paying attention to the behaviour of all of our MPs? We wouldn't be looking for logic and honesty if we knew what people are 'representing us.
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=3045828
Maybe not just their expenses should be audited? Their behaviour speaks volumes about their ability to 'govern'.
Liberals argue the tactic was consistent with their position that while they oppose the budget, they do not want to trigger an election.
That has to be one of the weakest rationalizations I've ever seen. It's not a question of one action being consistent with anything as important as a principle. It's the much more banal fact that they're afraid of an election and everything they do is governed by that fear. Mutton dressed as lamb.
I seem to recall Mike Harris being good at these omnibus bills too.
You remember correctly and it isn't a coincidence.