Speaker of the House Peter Milliken is expected to finally rule this week on Derek Lee's contempt of Parliament motion. He will either rule that the Government is in contempt, setting up a showdown on a possible confidence vote; or he will acknowledge that we shouldn't give detailed information of our current combat operations to Ujjal Dosangh. Guaranteed all the parties in our House of Commons have already decided how they are going to spin this decision, be it yes or no. I know that I already have some jokes in mind regardless of which way the ruling breaks.
Should he defeat Lee's motion, I will be in the Speaker's corner! Ha ha. I couldn’t contain myself any longer. The wait has been unbearable.
I am curious to know how you expect him to rule. I believe that he will turf the motion, but I suppose anything is possible. Technically Milliken is a Liberal MP. Last month I asked the poll question:
DO YOU THINK PARLIAMENT FINDING THE GOVERNMENT IN CONTEMPT REPRESENTS A MOTION OF NON CONFIDENCE?
Yes (79%)
No (21%)
PS: Can anyone confirm if Marlene Jennings was wearing the giant sun glasses in Parliament for a medical condition? Otherwise I have a few jokes I'd like to make in my next blog post...
You should just make fun of her anyways. You can always apologize later. That's what they do - except they have parliamentary immunity...
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, I'm hoping the Speaker rules against Derek Lee's motion and puts the opposition in their place. On the other, I'd love to see the motion passed and see how fast the Liberals squrim and try to get out of that ever pesky election when the PM calls for a confidence motion.
ReplyDeleteIceman, that was Diane Finley who had to wear the large sunglasses in Parlament whie she suffered from Graves disease. Bright lights made her eyes very sensitive.
As reported when she missed the vote on a liberal motion, Jennings recently had eye surgery.
ReplyDeleteJohn
I hate to be the guy that splits hairs over technicalities, but I think this is important. The Speaker is not ruling on the motion and does not decide whether the government is in contempt. The House does that.
ReplyDeleteAny MP can propose a motion finding that the privileges of Parliament have been breached, and ordering remedy or sanction. Like any other motion - it requires notice, and it "waits its turn", so to speak. However, there is a procedure in place, recognizing the importance of privilege motions, that allows the Speaker to give particular motions relating to privilege priority over all other House business, bypassing the queue in effect. In order to prevent wholesale abuse (eg, MPs rising on a point of privilege to congratulate their home town high school football team), the Speaker must be convinced that, on first glance, the question proposed for debate appears to be one related to the privileges of a Member, or of the House, and has been raised at the earliest possible opportunity. The Speaker expresses no opinion as to whether the privileges of Parliament have indeed been breached, or whether anyone is in contempt.
At this point, the government is not arguing that its not in contempt per se, or that privileges of the House have not been breached (that would come during actual debate on the motion). Rather, it is making the far more ambitious and agressive argument that the opposition motions do not relate to any known privilege of the House. While some novel and interesting points have been raised by the government, this argument is unlikely to succeed, and its quite remarkable that debate and deliberation on this point has now reached its 5th week.
When the Speaker inevitably rules that the question proposed by Lee, et al, are properly ones of privilege, the obvious opposition spin will be that the "Speaker has sided with the opposition" and has "ruled the government to be in contempt." This isnt true - the Speaker will not express an opinion on the merits of the motions. And an ignorant media will gleefully repeat the error. It isn't helpful that some of our own supporters seem confused on this issue.
After the Speaker's ruling, the House will debate whether its privileges have been breached, and the House will vote on whether anyone is in contempt. The House decides what its privileges are. The opposition would rather frame this as a decision of the Speaker (which it isnt), because he commands more respect than an obviously partisan and self interested House. Obviously, the optics of the House deciding on its own privileges aren't good.
Thank you John. There is no reason to make Corey Hart jokes if she had eye surgery.
ReplyDeleteA vote to censure the Conservatives for contempt of parliament is about as big a vote of non-confidence as you can get. Duceppe will love it because he will return to parliament with the majority of Quebec ridings. The NDP won't know what to do, but they sure won't want to give the Liberals the chance to make them look like they're supporting the government. Layton will probably declare early to leave the Liberals holding the bag.
ReplyDeleteThe Liberals will either have to lose face and back down or defeat the government. In any election the Conservatives will probably return as a minority with a few more seats, but they will be able to operate as a majority since the Liberals will not dare to bring about another election for many years. These buffoons keep giving the PM what he wants.