Van Loan Warrior: How to lose parliamentary agendas and fail to influence opposition parties

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 12:56 PM - 0 Comments

If, during this afternoon’s episode of Question Period, the cloud hanging over the head of Peter Van Loan seems even darker than usual, it’s with good reason. This morning, he once again lost control of the House of Commons, which was hijacked by a concurrence motion debate — on the tobacco industry, this time, not that it really matters. As a result, he won’t be able to move his legislative chess pieces forward until this afternoon, at the very earliest.

But as frustrating as it must be for Van Loan to watch those precious end-of-sessions minutes dwindle away, however, it pales in comparison to the defeat that he suffered last night, when he became the first government house leader in Canadian parliamentary history to be lose a vote on whether to extend the sitting hours. In fact, he’s the first house leader in Canadian parliamentary history (which, in this case, admittedly only goes back to 1982, since that’s when the Standing Orders changed) who has been forced to hold a vote on whether to extend the sitting hours.

Under majority and minority governments alike, the request – which can only be made once, on the tenth day before the session is scheduled to adjourn – usually passed on unanimous consent. This time, though, the opposition parties forced the government to defend its desire to hold night sittings, and challenged Van Loan to provide a list of priority legislation that must make it through before the summer break. It was all priority legislation, Van Loan insisted – an argument that, on balance, the opposition parties clearly found uncompelling. They defeated the motion, 139-114.

Predictably, Van Loan came out swinging with a press release that excoriated the united opposition parties for wanting to “work less”:
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That's some mighty fine print: Maybe Justice isn't just a rerun after all

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 12:43 AM - 0 Comments

I was about to fall asleep when I suddenly realized that there is a small, but potentially significant difference in the wording for this week’s 106(4)-mandated Justice meeting.

Last time around, the four members summoned the committee to discuss the motion to hold hearings into the Cadman Affair, which chair Art Hanger made short work of, ruling that he had already found the motion to be out of order, so any further debate on the matter would be moot. Procedurally questionable, given that there is still the outstanding issue of a vote not taken (and that, Robert Frost would suggest, could make all the difference) but close enough to allow him to adjourn the meeting properly, rather than simply bolt from the room.
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Inside the (metaphorical) Queensway – Parliamentary reform redux

By kadyomalley - Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 10:11 PM - 0 Comments

Wonkronicity Alert:

Hey, remember a few weeks back, when Halifax Chronicle Herald reporter Steve Maher and I took a road trip to the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen’s University for a panel on parliamentary reform (and also do some spectacularly politically geeky sightseeing)?

Well, the final version of Dr. Tom Axworthy’s paper, Everything Old is New Again: Observations on Parliamentary Reform, has been posted to the CSD website — complete with a full summary of the comments, critiques and general observations that arose during our discussion. The full report is available here, but I’ve taken the liberty of copypasting some of the highlights from the panel recap after the jump. See if you can pick out what ITQ had to say:
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Remembrance of PROCs Past: Those who forget history …

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 4:17 PM - 0 Comments

… are fortunate enough to be able to relive it, in almost realtime, via the ITQ archives:

• Liveblogging the Procedure and House Affairs Committee: Filibuster ahoy! (February 5, 2008)

• Liveblogging PROC: We’ll stop blogging when he stops talking – the return of the killer filibuster (February 7, 2008)

• Liveblogging PROC: Bustafila! Round Three Macleans.ca Blog Central (February 12, 2008)

• Liveblogging PROC: His point – and he *does* have one … (February 14, 2008)

• Liveblogging PROC: Is this the end of a very Goodyear? (March 4, 2008)

• Liveblogging PROC – We’ll leave a candle in the window, Gary (March 6, 2008)