The all-night vote-a-thon

So in just a little while the Canadian House of Commons is set to begin would could be close to 24 hours of straight voting (they'll be voting on hundreds of proposed amendments to the recently introduced budget).  Because the Conservatives have a majority government the outcome isn't really in question, though I guess when you're trying to coordinate such large number of people for such a long period of time unexpected things may crop up.

Anyway,  for a while I'd been thinking about heading over to check out a little of this vote-a-thon, despite the fact that it will probably be just about the most boring thing in the world.

Then I went out for a walk.

Originally I was thinking I might just pick out a coffee.  Turns out that I ended up going for a slightly longer walk and ended up walking past Parliament.

By the time I made it to Parliament I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I probably would just give the whole vote-a-thon thing a skip and maybe just watch the streaming version, if anything.

Of course now that I'm back home and I get the sense that the voting is just about to get underway I'm a little more interested in the idea of heading over to watch the late night parliamentary antics.

Of course another problem is that if I head out to the House of Commons I'll lose my online coverage of the 'filibuster' currently ongoing in the Newfoundland House of Assembly (which is currently in recess while they resolve a point of order relating to comments about whether or not someone called someone racist and whether or not the comments are unparliamentary).

Anyway,  what a night.  I have more strange opposition-induced middle of the night legislating than I ever thought I'd have a chance to witness.

More poking about on the internet

Not surprisingly, my poking about on the internet didn't end with my examination of The Council on Governmental Ethics Laws's membership list.

I soon found myself looking at Standing Orders/House rules for various legislatures in Canada. While looking at the standing orders for Newfoundland and Labrador and the House Rules for Nova Scotia I was surprised by the fact that neither had been amended in the past few years. The last time the Newfoundland Standing Orders were amended was 2005. The last time that Nova Scotia's House Rules were amended was 1998. Between these two amendment dates and now both of these legislatures have had significant spending scandals that seem to have had no impact on procedure.

This means that in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia the newly constituted Management Commissions that came about because of these scandals are not mentioned. Though these Management Commissions aren't technically matters of procedure, that they aren't mentioned at all seems a little strange to me.

It should also be noted that neither of these two sets of rules seem to deal with matters relating to matters of ethics or conflict of interest.

I think these last two points become a little more significant when these provincial rules are contrasted with the House of Commons' Standing Orders. Both the Board of Internal Economy (the federal analog to provincial Management Commissions) and the Conflict of Interest Code are included in the Standing Orders. Though I guess I will leave it to you to make of this what you will.

The return of the Occupy Nova Scotia/Halifax media coverage

It seems that after about a week without coverage mainstream media has come back to the Occupy Halifax/Nova Scotia protests in the Grand Parade. I am now curious to see if the other media outlets in the city will provide an update now that at least one source has? Also, isn't just the fact that a tent city has sprung up in downtown Halifax something of a newsworthy story locally? I imagine that this is having at least some impact on the thousands of people who work in the surrounding area.

Interestingly, so far I haven't seen mention in the mainstream media of the occupation's associated publication, Occupy Magazine. An notable development since yesterday on the Occupy Magazine front is that the publication is now available online. Apparently the print only idea only lasted a day or two before cheaper distribution mechanisms were decided upon.

The upside of Occupy Magazine being available online is that I have now had a chance to see the type of material it contains without actually having a print copy in my hand. And at least for their first issue they seem to have gone with content relating to the Occupy movement first published in other venues. Only a small portion of the magazine was comprised of content written specifically for this publication. I guess we will have to wait for subsequent issues of the magazine to see if this model is continued or if they are able to source original content from international contributors, as seems to be their goal.

In related news, there seems to have been an 'Occupy'-themed "open the House of Assembly" protest at the confederation building in St. John's today.

At the moment it seems that Atlantic Canada is just full of excited Occupiers.

This is even more shocking

A few days ago I posted justifications Kathy Dunderdale gave for not opening the House of Assembly until the spring.

It seems that since that post she has given even more ridiculous statements about nature of the House that really indicate that she doesn't understand the role of the legislature.

CBC is reporting that Dunderdale suggested that:

If the house of assembly was just about question period, where most of the accountability takes place, then we could go and do that in a month's time

First of all, though it is probably already obvious, most of the 'accountability' does not take in question period. It's my opinion that question period could be completely eliminated with out having a significant impact on the ability of the members of the legislature to hold the government to account.

The members of the House have a much greater ability to hold the government to account through things like the Public Accounts Committee and the estimates committee. Of course, whether or not these mechanisms are used effectively or not is another matter altogether.

And maybe most importantly the legislature is the place where the government of the day has to introduce, defend, and justify its legislative and budgetary proposals. The members of the House, whether they are government or opposition, have the responsibility to examine these proposals and engage in a public discussion of their merits.

If anything, the existence of Question Period allows all parties to act as though it is the important function of the House, that it is where accountability takes place. And they can do this because the quotes and fast-paced exchanges that take place in Question Period are what make the news. Sadly, Question Period is nothing more than a facade of accountability that distracts from what most members, opposition and government, aren't doing, which is effectively holding the government of the day to account through the various means available to them.

The worst part of this is that most people probably don't know how unimportant question period is in the scheme of things. They also probably don't know that Ms. Dunderdale's comments betray a shocking lack of knowledge regarding the proper functioning of a parliamentary government. And comments like this won't help them have a better sense of how a legislature can best hold the government of the day to account.

This brings back memories

It seems that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador will be going ahead with their plan to sue big tobacco 10 years after passing the enabling legislation.

Working at the public hearings held before the passage of the legislation that got this ball rolling was one of my first responsibilities as page when I started working at the House of Assembly in April 2001. Though I think I only worked for one such session I still remember quite a number of the presenters that participated in the event.

In many ways the presentations pretty much summed up the whole pro/anti-tobacco discourse. On the anti side there were presentations from older individuals suffering from tobacco related ailments, an anti-tobacco 'youth team,' and several doctors. Opposing the legislation and the idea of the lawsuit was a lone tobacco industry advocate - a lawyer/law professor if my memory serves me correctly. Given that the tobacco advocate was a hired gun it isn't too surprising that they gave the most professional and effective presentation of the day. And, for better or worse, it is their presentation that I remember the most.

Actually, as far as presentations on dry topics go, this may have been most engaging presentation I have ever heard - and it was in the service of an industry with a somewhat tarnished reputation, a fact that has since made me feel a little strange about finding it to be such an effective presentation. But I guess this is basically the movie Thank You For Smoking was about.

Of course, to no one's surprise, the legislation was eventually passed and the chain of events leading up to today's story set in action.

Anyway, if it has taken 10 years to get to through the pre-lawsuit I am curious to see how long it will take to get through the full-blown lawsuit phase and whether or not not they will ever meet with any success.

Score
Cameron 26
Neil 0