Blogs

Mark Jarvis at Maclean's in a piece on Dalton McGuinty's prorogation of the Ontario legislature:

Across the country prime ministers and premiers are making it clear that they see legislatures – our elected representatives – as an undue burden. Whether as a means of managing legislative impasses or risks of losing confidence or simply to escape scrutiny, first ministers have demonstrated a predilection for simply shutting down the respective legislative assemblies in their jurisdictions.
It is worth examining the premier’s own words in explaining the prorogation. In an email sent to Liberal supporters McGuinty said: “I’ve asked the Lieutenant Governor to prorogue the legislature to allow those discussions with our labour partners and the opposition to occur in an atmosphere that is free of the heightened rancour of politics in the legislature…”
The “rancour” that Premier McGuinty is so dismissive of is an essential dynamic of public accountability within our democratic system, which sees partisan politics – institutionalized adversarialism – as the best means of securing democracy.

Count me among those who feel that any legacy of McGuinty's has been badly tarnished by the manner of his departure. Shutting the legislature down for months so a party with a minority of seats can maintain control of the agenda is the ultimate act of contempt.

Yesterday on Twitter I noticed Glen Murray, Ontario's Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities (and @Glen4TC on Twitter), promote this Toronto Star editorial about the latest compensation restraint proposal and add the following:

Premier McGuinty's wage freeze aims to save jobs

I replied with a three parter:

Three things: you continue with the implicit assumption that cuts are the only way to deal with the deficit. Not so.
You imply a wage freeze has been uniformly rejected and could never result from normal collective bargaining. Not so.
The exclusive focus on the wage freeze glosses over the worst and most undemocratic aspects of the proposal.

Early this morning I got three replies:

I don't know if the quote will make it into any published reports or news broadcasts but a couple of members of the press corps posting to Twitter have Dwight Duncan acknowledging that the "compensation restraint" legislation he has unveiled this morning comes with a certain amount of "constitutional risk."
So the message he's sending to the unionized public service -- people we employ -- is that we intend to come as close to impinging on their Charter rights as we think we can get away with rather than give the collective bargaining process a chance to work.
Not exactly a model employer.
The other consideration is whether the taxpayer ends up saving anything at all because aside from the cost of the legal proceedings which will surely follow, there's the possibility of a settlement which goes against the government and ends up costing more than it might have saved if it negotiated first and legislated later. Duncan must think he and his staff are awfully good. If he's wrong, do we get his resignation? It won't be enough.

As I write, members of the provincial legislature are debating a motion brought by the Progressive Conservatives to hold Energy Minister Chris Bentley in contempt of parliament. Well, some of the members are debating it. Mike Crawley, who covers Queen's Park for the CBC, just tweeted this:

Nearly all PC & NDP MPPs in Chamber to debate contempt motion; Lib benches nearly empty

Would you like a better look at that photo? It certainly illustrates the point.
The original breach of privilege involved Bentley's refusal to supply documents, related to the cancellation of the Oakville power plant, to a legislative committee. In accordance with a ruling by the Speaker those documents were released yesterday. One could argue, as I suspect many Liberals will, that the contempt motion was rendered irrelevant the moment that happened. But that doesn't matter.

When the McGuinty government cancelled the construction of a power plant in the riding of Oakville in 2010, the Liberals had a comfortable majority in the legislature and were a full year away from a scheduled election. They still found the matter urgent enough to make a decision without knowing how much it was going to cost or even when they would know the full cost.
The details surrounding that decision are now the subject of a ruling by the Speaker of the Legislature that found the government violated parliamentary privilege when it refused a committee request to review them. And the first question this report raises for me is: how could the decision to cancel the plant have been anything but a purely political calculation if cost wasn't even a consideration? Fully two years later we still can't establish the cost.

Secret documents on the cost of cancelling an Oakville power plant will not be released until a compensation deal is reached with the builder, Premier Dalton McGuinty insisted Monday.
After warning that releasing the documents too soon could “drive up costs for taxpayers” by revealing sensitive information, McGuinty said he’s “asking the opposition parties to recognize that.”

How are the opposition parties supposed to recognize anything if they can't see the documents? What you're asking them, along with the rest of us, to do is to just trust you.