Predictable response?

The introduction of amendments to the accesss to information law in Newfoundland earlier this week caused quite a furor. Not surprisingly, the media and the opposition parties were less than keen to see changes that will make it easier for the government to deny access to information. 

Aside from the fact that these amendments seemed tailor-made to cause the uproar that they caused, I find the timing quite strange.  If you wanted these amendments to seem like normal housekeeping amendments, which seems to be what the government wants, why would they more or less hide the details of the changes until the end of the legislative session and then try to ram the bill through on the same week it was introduced?  Could they have come up with an approach that would be more likely to raise suspicion among the critics whose ire they were hoping to avoid? If so, I'd be curious to see such an approach implemented at some point in time.

Because of cabinet exemptions to the law we will likely never know, but I would really love to know how long these changes have been in the works and how long the text of the current bill has been ready. In other words, how long were they sitting on the bill in its final form before they introduced it? (And as far as I know there hadn't been much discussion of such a bill/changes in the run-up to its introduction - a fact that likely intensified the feeling of shock among opponents).

While here are other aspects of this bill that merit consideration, the issue of it's timing seems particularly peculiar to me.

The vote-a-thon really is just voting

So last night I broke down and went to the House of Commons vote-a-thon.

I arrived at about 11:00 PM, just in time to catch the reading of the last 200 motions.

Much to my surprise, at about midnight Harper and the rest of the front benches showed up.

Voice voting started shortly afterwards.

They then rang the bells for 30 minutes before starting the roll call votes.

From then on it was just roll call vote after roll call vote.

I called it a night just before two and about 7 votes.

It's still ongoing, if you're interested or if you don't believe me that they really are doing about 24 hours of straight roll call votes.  Oh, and it's about as boring/absolutely fascinating as you would expect it to be (kind of reminds me of watching the GG's door in December 2008, or OJ's white Bronco in the nineties).

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.

Is it just me or are do these bare more than just a passing resemblance to one another?

I have recently come across a few passage that deal with the election of speakers in Canadian legislatures. As I was reading these I occasionally had a strange sense that I had read some of the passages before.

From Monpetit and Marleau's House of Commons Procedure and Practice (2nd edition):

The election of a Speaker has precedence over all other matters. No motion for adjournment is accepted until a Speaker is declared elected and installed in the Chair. Once he or she has been elected, after the customary thanks and congratulations have been expressed and after announcing the time and the date for the Speech from the Throne, the Speaker adjourns the House until the next sitting.

From British Columbia legislature's Standing Orders:

11 (a) (4) The election of a Speaker shall take precedence over all other business and no Motion of any kind shall be accepted, and the House shall continue to sit, if necessary, beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, until a Speaker is elected and is installed in the Chair and if the House has continued to sit beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, the Speaker shall thereupon adjourn the House until the next sitting, unless otherwise ordered.

From the Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly's Standing Orders:

2 (7) The election of a Speaker shall take precedence over all other business and the House shall continue to sit, if necessary, beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, until a Speaker is elected and is installed in the chair and if the House has continued to sit beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, the new Speaker shall thereupon adjourn the House until the next sitting day.

From the Rules and Procedures of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan:

40(4) The election of a Speaker shall take precedence over all other business and no motion of any kind shall be accepted, and the Assembly shall continue to sit, if necessary, beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, until a Speaker is elected and is installed in the chair. If the Assembly has continued to sit beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, the Speaker shall thereupon adjourn the Assembly until the next sitting.

From the New Brunswick legislature's Standing Rules:

The election of a Speaker shall take precedence over all other business and no motion of any kind shall be accepted, and the House shall continue to sit, if necessary, beyond its ordinary time of daily adjournment, until a Speaker is elected and is installed in the Chair and if the House has continued to sit beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, the Speaker shall thereupon adjourn the House until the next sitting, unless otherwise ordered.

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.