Democracy Watch has a new feature on their website. It's explained here:
Today, Democracy Watch launched its online counter to track how much time has passed since the federal Conservatives have violated Parliament's deadline for introducing a bill to restrict election fraud robocalls and strengthen election law enforcement. As of today, the Conservatives have been in violation of the resolution for more than 19 weeks.
The House of Commons passed a resolution unanimously last March setting a deadline of the end of September for the Conservatives to introduce the bill.
Resolutions of that type aren't binding but as DW notes, this one passed unanimously. All the Conservatives who were present stood up and voted in favour along with everyone else. They wouldn't do that if they didn't mean it, would they?
Of course this wouldn't be the first time that Harper's government has simply waited out a problem and gotten away with it. Remember the Afghan detainee documents? A lot of them never did see the light of day and probably never will. And that's how likely we are to see a real response to that resolution.
Procrastination works. All (successful) politicians know this. Chretien was a master. The electorate has a notoriously low attention span. Paul Martin failed to learn this lesson from the master, and, therefore, failed.
And anyway, most of the electorate isn't aware of the issue anyway. Those of us who DO have a decent attention span are focused on the Kardashians.
Or "The Biggest Loser".
How's THAT for irony.
One more thing. Although politicians can count on the tactic of procrastination to work with the electorate, husbands can NOT count on this same tactic working on their spouses.
Whose attention spans and memories are prodigious.
Trust me on this.