The Commons: So it ends

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 6:55 PM - 140 Comments

Whatever else was discussed within the walls of the House of Commons these last 14 months, the 40th Parliament was about Parliament. From its unprecedented start to its unprecedented end, here was a debate about our democracy—how it works, why it exists and what it means. These were the questions this place wrestled with each day. There are the questions now, implicitly or explicitly, laid before the public.

The events of this day are thus now open to interpretation. By one understanding, a majority of the people’s representatives expressed their lack of confidence in the those representatives who presently form the people’s government, thus compelling the government to resign and the Governor General to call for a general vote of the people. By another understanding, the Liberals conspired with the socialists and separatists to defeat Stephen Harper’s government and force an unnecessary and dangerous election.

Or understand what happened today as a concession. From all sides. An admission of defeat on the part of the 40th Parliament and a plea to the public to sort out what are wildly divergent views on the proper functioning of Parliamentary democracy.
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The case of Imam Zijad Delic

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 4, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Word came Friday night that Defence Minister Peter MacKay had revoked the invitation of Imam Zijad Delic to speak at forum hosted by the Department of National Defence. On Sunday, Jack Layton criticized MacKay’s decision.

Imam Delic, who spoke at a forum hosted by the Foreign Affairs department in 2008, is the executive director of the Canadian Islamic Congress, which Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has criticized on account of remarks made by its former president. (The Congress and this magazine have some history as well, a matter Imam Delic seems to have commented on.)

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The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 1:38 PM - 0 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, September 26, 2010 at 2:37 PM - 0 Comments

We resume our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

A parliamentarian

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 11:52 AM - 0 Comments

A short note on unfortunate news.

Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde announced last week that she has been diagnosed again with cancer and, as a result, she will not be seeking reelection. Over the last three years of observing Parliament and its players, Ms. Lalonde has distinguished herself in these eyes as a passionate, insistent voice pushing this place to consider difficult matters: euthanasia, the treatment of Afghan detainees, Omar Khadr. Last week she was part of a Public Policy Forum discussion on the role of Parliamentary committees and indeed, whatever her original reason for entering federal politics and whenever an election does bring her time in Ottawa to an end, she will depart as a parliamentarian, a title that should be reserved for those most honourably committed to this institution as a true and valuable forum. The House will be poorer in her absence, but made richer by her time here.

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 4:15 PM - 15 Comments

One last time before pausing for the summer: our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 3:55 PM - 10 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 6, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 40 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, May 30, 2010 at 4:02 PM - 15 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 6:45 PM - 1 Comment

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 4:38 PM - 9 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, May 9, 2010 at 9:35 AM - 20 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 5:01 PM - 24 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, April 25, 2010 at 12:44 PM - 30 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

'A person's right to choose is what is at the heart of this bill'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:44 AM - 21 Comments

Francine Lalonde’s private member’s bill on assisted suicide—previously discussed here—received its final hour of debate Tuesday evening and was then defeated last night by a count of 230-57. Lalonde was basically asking, at this point, for her bill to be sent to committee for further study and amendment.

Steven Fletcher, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, who has written about his feelings on this issue and Lalonde’s bill, abstained. She did though draw the support of two cabinet ministers—Lawrence Cannon and Josee Verner—and several Liberal and NDP members.

The Commons: Too little, too late

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 5:39 PM - 67 Comments

The Scene. Bob Rae stood with nothing to say about Helena Guergis. Alas, the good news ended there.

Each day, he said, there were new allegations, new information about this country’s handling of detainees in Afghanistan. None of this is being resolved. So why not a public inquiry to sort it all out?

Here came the Defence Minister, quite ready for this. “Mr. Speaker, the key word in the honourable member’s question was ‘allegations,’” Peter MacKay said. “In fact what we knew yesterday was the witness before the committee made allegations, and when specifically asked about these allegations he said he had no specific evidence to support the claims. In fact it was the honourable member who posed questions to him that elicited that response. When specifically asked if he was even in the area when these alleged incidents occurred, he said ‘no.’”

This is, you might note, just about the same tack the government employed five months ago after Richard Colvin’s initial testimony. And that was, you might’ve noticed, not particularly successful in bringing this matter to a conclusion.

Mr. Rae tried again. “Mr. Speaker, it is not going to do,” he offered, somewhat exasperatedly, “to not recognize the seriousness of the allegations which were made by the individual yesterday.” Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, April 10, 2010 at 11:40 PM - 18 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 3:18 PM - 14 Comments

After a week off to accommodate all that thinking in Montreal, here is the return of our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

Maclean's Interview: Bernice Packford

By Ken MacQueen - Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 4:27 PM - 43 Comments

Photographs by Brian Howell

Last month, as her 95th birthday approached, Bernice Levitz Packford, a one-time Victoria citizen of the year, wrote to her local newspaper, the Times Colonist. “I am tired and I am ready to die now,” began her letter, a carefully considered argument in favour of changing the Criminal Code to allow for doctor-assisted suicide. “I have decided, after much reflection, that I wish to end my life now before my mind and body deteriorate further so I am incapable of making that decision,” wrote Packford, who lives in her home with the help of caregivers. She concluded: “Can Parliament find the gumption to give me the right to assisted suicide? I could then have my family and friends around me to say goodbye as I die with dignity.” Packford’s letter has triggered a renewed debate on the issue, in the pages of the newspaper and on websites, both for and against assisted suicide.

Q: You started your letter with the sentence: “I’m tired and I’m ready to die now.” You must have expected you’d stir things up.
A: I never though it would create such a public response. Never.
One thing I do know is that people do not face their mortality. I know that because I wrote a letter to the editor about making a will. People do not generally make a will and they die without a will, leaving so much grief for their children. And that’s because of a refusal to face our mortality.

Q: You can’t be accused of that. Why did you write the letter?
A: I am in good health. I’m not suffering from an illness that will be eventually fatal. So my case is not covered [in the current death with dignity debate]. That’s why I wrote that letter. I’m tired and I do suffer from congestive heart failure [which robs her of energy and requires her to use a walker]. I can have a stroke. I’ve had a stroke, and I recovered from that. I’m facing imminent sickness or a stroke, which will leave me conscious and helpless. And that thought fills me with horror.

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The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 19, 2010 at 4:53 PM - 13 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

'My bill has a specific objective'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 1:49 PM - 0 Comments

For those at all intrigued by last night’s sketch, the full debate on Francine Lalonde’s bill begins here in yesterday’s Hansard.

The Commons: ‘This is not an easy issue’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 10:50 PM - 70 Comments

The Scene. It being 5:55pm, the Speaker moved on to time allotted for private members’ business, specially the resumption of debate on bill C-384. Approximately 250 of the 277 members, gathered previously to vote on a pair of motions, collected their belongings and departed for dinner.

The Speaker waited a few minutes for the House to settle, then called on the Bloc’s Francine Lalonde to restate herself. Clutching her notes with both hands, she stood and explained that C-384, her proposal, sought to amend the Criminal Code for the purposes of decriminalizing euthanasia or medically assisted suicide. Continue…

The Commons: 'Will they stop already?'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 7:57 PM - 89 Comments

The Scene. “General Natynczyk said what the government has been saying all along,” the Prime Minister explained en francais with his first opportunity.

Across the way, Gilles Duceppe burst out laughing.

Sixteen times these past few weeks members of this government told the House that not a single proven allegation of abuse suffered by a Canadian-transferred detainee could be found. The Defence Minister, the Transport Minister and the Defence Minister’s parliamentary secretary all testified as such.

Two days ago, the Globe reported otherwise. General Walter Natynczyk insisted that a close reading of the situation in question demonstrated the detainee, later beaten by Afghan authorities, was not so much detained and transferred, as merely questioned. And government ministers insisted on accepting Gen. Natynczyk’s version of events.

Only just before noon today, Gen. Natynczyk summoned the cameras and notepads and announced that he was wrong, that new information indicated the detainee in question was not just questioned, but in fact taken into custody. And so suddenly, it seemed, there was some explaining to do.

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What they said (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 11:40 PM - 3 Comments

On April 23, 2007, the Globe reported what it had learned from interviews with 30 detainees. Two days later, the paper revealed what the Foreign Affairs department’s own reporting disclosed about torture in Afghanistan. After the premature announcement of a new transfer agreement that week, a new deal was signed on May 3.

Understandably, the issue dominated Question Period during this time—dozens of questions asked between April 23 and May 7 as new stories and allegations came to light. Herein, a selection of questions and answers during that period. Continue…