Inside Politics

CommitteeWatch Flashback: Irwin Cotler's C-10 amendments redux

by Kady O'Malley Posted: December 19, 2011 2:16 PM Last Updated: December 19, 2011 2:33 PM
In an end-of-sitting interview last week, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan argued that those proposed amendments to the omnibus crime bill that his government tried, and failed, to put forward at report stage were "not the same" as those tabled at committee by Liberal MP Irwin Cotler. 

"They are actually different," he told reporters. "Did you actually read them and compare them side by side?"

Actually, yes, now that you mention it. 

If you click on that link, you'll see that way back on November 30th, I posted the Cotler-proposed amendments alongside the corresponding amendments that were subsequently proposed by the government, but rejected by the speaker on the grounds that they should have been brought forward at committee.

(For the record, I believe I was among the first to notice the correlation between the two sets of amendments, which I credit to having sat through virtually every minute of the marathon clause-by-clause review, including Cotler's impassioned, if ultimately futile attempt to convince his Conservative colleagues that he was trying to improve the section of the bill that would help terrorism victims and their families successfully sue the responsible entity.) 

In the same interview as quoted above, Van Loan claimed that, although his government "saw merit in some of the concepts" raised in the Cotler amendments, it "did not see merit in the specific wording."   

But as I noted in my original post, if there was some concern over the minor differences in wording in Cotler's proposed changes, it would have been easy to craft a series of friendly sub-amendments that would address any perceived weaknesses. That is, it would have been easy to do so had the government members present been paying attention to the discussion and giving due consideration to the issues that he had raised, instead of simply voting down opposition amendments by rote. 

In any case, not one of them did so. 

Alternately, the minister could have had his parliamentary secretary -- or any Conservative MP, really -- bring forward amendments in the very same form that he would eventually -- unsuccessfully -- attempt to introduce at report stage. 

That, too, failed to transpire.

In fact, aside from the occasional intervention to grumble about how much scrutiny the bills in question had undergone during previous parliaments -- an occurrence that diminished in frequency as the hours ticked by --  the Conservative contingent was largely silent throughout the discussion, popping up only to make the occasional point of order or when the chair called for a recorded vote.

Given all that, Van Loan's suggestion that he had given careful consideration to the Cotler amendments before deciding to proceed down a different route -- one that, as it turned out, would ultimately be blocked by the speaker -- is difficult to reconcile with the facts. 

More importantly, though, it should also raise a red flag for the government on the wisdom of sending MPs to committee to act as automatons, rather than heed the recommendations that come forward for ways to improve a particular piece of legislation, whether it comes from a witness or from the other side of the committee table. 
 

Tags: blackberry jungle, c-10, irwin cotler, parliamentary democracy 101, peter van loan