The House: Considering reform
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 24, 2011 - 12 Comments
Last month, Mark Jarvis wrote here about potential parliamentary reforms as part of our series on the House. Shortly thereafter he asked if I had any thoughts on what he’d written and eventually I got around to writing something down. In the interests of continuing the discussion, here is the email I sent to him last week.
Let me state from the outset that I am not a professional constitutional scholar. Or even an amateur constitutional scholar. I am merely paid to put on a suit most week days and spend inordinate amounts of time watching politicians more closely than is probably advisable.
My woeful inadequacies thus acknowledged from the outset, I will happily offer a few thoughts.
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Formally Proposed Parliamentary Reform of the Week
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 11:52 AM - 3 Comments
A British committee set up in the wake of all that unpleasantness over MPs’ expenses, comes back with some suggestions.
“Achievable” but radical change to rebuild parliament’s independence from the executive, including a new body of elected backbenchers responsible for organising Commons business, is proposed today by a prestigious select committee set up by Gordon Brown.
The report also suggests that the public should be a given some direct say over what MPs debate, through devices such as e-petitions. Prime minister’s questions would be shifted from Wednesday to Thursday afternoon to liberate more time for backbenchers on Wednesday. It calls for Commons select committees to be streamlined and given more independence from the government so they are able to scrutinise Whitehall departments more thoroughly. Their chairmen ought to be elected by the whole house in a secret vote, rather than effectively agreed between the party whips, it says.
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Ad Hoc Parliamentary Reform of the Week
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 11:37 AM - 6 Comments
If the government won’t answer your requests in Question Period, leave.
Frustrated by Premier Dalton McGuinty’s refusal to hold public hearings on the controversial 13 per cent HST, the 25-member Progressive Conservative caucus stormed out of the Legislature’s daily question period today shortly after it began.
“You have lost touch,” Conservative Leader Tim Hudak told McGuinty before the stunt took place, accusing the Liberals of being afraid of a public backlash over the tax. ”If Premier McGuinty is going to show that level of contempt for taxpayers by forcing through the largest sales tax grab in the history of this province without any kind of public hearings . . . we see no point in proceeding with question period today.”
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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…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:
Continue…
