(Scroll down to the Q&A.)
Bill C-38 has mobilized groups in Canada from seniors to environmentalists to municipal councillors, to First Nations, to legal scholars and beyond.
It came back before the House of Commons on Monday, May 4.
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Elizabeth May is brilliant in her argument – the legislation is out of order. Read or hear it for yourself: (Or, the next item is a briefer news report.)
http://elizabethmaymp.ca/parliament/points-of-order/2012/06/04/points-of-order-bill-c-38/
Now we wait to see the caliber of the Speaker-of-the-House of Commons, Andrew Scheer.
His decision will affect the history of democracy in Canada.
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News report May 5: Elizabeth May refers the omnibus Budget bill, C-38, to the Speaker.
Current status of C-38: Awaiting Speaker’s ruling.
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Q: So if this played out and the Speaker agreed with you, what would then happen?
Excerpt from Q&A: Elizabeth May, Maclean’s Magazine
http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/06/05/qa-elizabeth-may/#more-264180
by Aaron Wherry on Tuesday, June 5, 2012
A: Then the bill would be rejected.
And speakers have rejected bills that didn’t meet Standing Order 68 or are in other ways deficient. Over the history of Parliament, Speakers have ruled bills out of order. The Speaker does have that power.
The Speaker has a number of options. Obviously he could rule against me. He could rule for me 100% and say this bill is rejected, it’s not a proper omnibus bill.
Or he could do the sort of partway ruling, such as what Peter Milliken did around the Afghan detainee documents and say, look, I’m prepared to find prima facie that this isn’t a properly constructed piece of omnibus legislation, these are the rules around an omnibus bill and I’m asking if the government and the parties in the House, together, would like to present C-38 in proper form. In other words, punt it back to the government and the opposition parties to sort it out.
I think in a lot of ways that would be a helpful thing for the Speaker to do. Obviously helpful in terms of protecting democracy, which is my main argument.
But in the political undercurrents that I’m seeing right now, the movement against C-38 is growing and it’s growing in Conservative ranks, it’s growing in Conservative heartland.
There are an awful lot of people against this legislation. Keith Ashfield, in bringing in these changes, said changes to the Fisheries Act (which of course weren’t part of the budget) we have to bring in these changes to the Fisheries Act because there are so many municipalities across the country complaining about the current Fisheries Act.
Well, this weekend, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, almost unanimously, voted to appeal to the Prime Minister to remove the fisheries legislation from C-38. They are very concerned about it. Not only was that a group the government didn’t think would oppose them, they were claiming that group was on board.
I think they may have decided that by sticking a lot of controversial things inside a budget, nobody would ever notice them. But the opposition is building. And in ways that they probably didn’t expect. Because they probably thought, oh, it’ll be the usual suspects, the groups we’ve already attacked and smeared as radicals and getting money from foreign sources and we can ignore those people because we’ve shut them down and we’ll just ride this out.
But I don’t think that’s the case anymore. And I think if the Speaker can provide them the space, who knows, they might actually appreciate an out, so they can get what they need passed and reintroduce properly the bills that have nothing to do with the budget.
Q: Is there any argument to be made that your point of order should have been introduced before this bill was passed at second reading?
A: No, not really. You can introduce a point of order at anytime. And at the time of that, there were negotiations taking place between the official opposition and the government of the day and who knew how that was going to turn out?
In some ways, there could have been an argument that I should’ve waited to see what it looked like when it came out at the other end of committee.
And I thought about that, but realized this is a substantive point of order and I expect that Speaker Scheer will do it justice. And that means listening to the arguments from the other parties in the House, constructing, researching and writing what will be, one way or the other, a precedent-setting decision.
It’s not something done lightly and therefore I didn’t want to squeeze it so that my point of order would come when the bill came back at report stage.
Q: And would you say you feel confident at this point?
A: I feel confident that I’ve written an argument that is legally correct.