Public business through private members bills

This week the face of the government's crime prevention agenda belonged to a backbench MP few people know. 

Parm Gill introduced a private member's bill that would create a new criminal offence for luring young people into gangs. 

It's a private initiative but has the full support of the government, including Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who held a news conference to trumpet it.

"The measure contained in the Criminal Organizations Recruitment Act sends a strong signal that seeking to recruit youth into organized crime gangs is a serious offence that deserves tough but fair sentences," said Nicholson.

Gill's proposed tough-on-crime bill isn't the only one coming from the Conservative backbenches.

There are nine Conservative private members' bills in all and at least three have the full support of the government, which raises the question of why they're not being introduced in the name of the Harper government. 

Among the bills backed by the government are C-293, legislation that would allow the Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada to label some inmates as having frivolous or vexatious complainants and prevent them from submitting any more grievances. 

This week, in an email to CBC News, a spokesperson for Nicholson expressed the government's support for the bill from Roxanne James, MP for Scarborough Centre. 

"It would make much-needed improvements to the process," she said.  

Conservative MP Guy Lauzon also has a bill concerning offenders. The MP for Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry has proposed changes to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that would ensure that any money owed to a federal inmate from a lawsuit against the government would automatically be divvied up to pay debts such as child support, restitution orders or victim surcharge levied at the time of conviction. 

There are a few advantages in legislation taking the private member's route. First, unlike government legislation, private member's bills are drafted by House of Commons staff instead of the department of justice. That helps speed up the process and helpfully eliminates any potential embarrassing memos that might come to light from bureaucrats who question the necessity for or usefulness of the proposed legislation. 

The second reason is political. Supporting a backbencher with an idea it supports anyway also gives the government a means of boosting the profile of an MP without portfolio, perhaps someone who might hold a valuable riding. 

Yaroslav Baran says the PMB process is also relatively speedy. The former chief of staff to the government house leader and ex-senior communications advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper says PMBs have short debates and strict timelines for committees to report back to parliament.

"Committees have to process a bill very quickly. If they don't meet the deadline then the bill is deemed to have been reported back and it keeps moving through the process." 

Then there are the rare cases where PMBs are simply the best tactic. Baran points to Candice Hoeppner's bill to eliminate the long gun registry. He says a careful decision was made not to advance the bill as government legislation, "the theory being that because private member's bills are supposed to be free votes, that would empower and enable opposition members who support that inititative to vote freely and to support the bill." 

But now that the government has a majority, Baran says he can't imagine that's what's going on with the private member's law and order measures now before Parliament. 

"If there are meritorious policy initiatives outside of that [Throne Speech] mandate that are advanced by private members and the government feels that is a good idea, then the government will weigh in and publicly endorse that initiative. That's the kind of thing I think we're seeing now."

Nathan Cullen isn't so sure. He's the NDP's House Leader.

"I think the government is trying to bring in some of the policies that they don't necessarily want their name attached to but they really want to have happen. Either for political reasons, to feed their base and give them the wink and the nod or just things they think the Canadian public would have a problem with," he said.