Prior to their defeat on a confidence motion in the House of Commons on Friday, Stephen Harper and his ministers repeatedly warned that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff wanted an “unnecessary election.” At first glance, it seemed that they were right. Canadians have already gone to the polls three times in the past seven years and recent opinion polls showed little movement in favour of either the Conservatives or the Liberals. What they neglected to mention, for obvious reasons, is that last week a parliamentary committee found them in contempt of parliament for refusing to disclose the costs of several crime bills potentially representing significant government expenditure.
While the whole House was not able to vote on the contempt charge before the government was defeated, the charge is certainly not the merely procedural matter that the Harper government has suggested it is. Rather, the government’s refusal to disclose the costs of their crime bills, which would see more inmates serve longer sentences, is an affront to Canadian democracy itself. After all, if members of parliament do not know how many prisons the government plans to build or renovate or the number of correctional officers they plan to hire, how can they responsibly vote on the crime bills?
The Harper government maintains that it is not required to release the cost estimates for the crime legislation on the grounds that the estimates are “cabinet confidences,” a special type of classified information. Cabinet confidences were not created to allow the government to withhold information from parliament, but rather to allow cabinet ministers to freely debate and discuss proposed bills without fear of leaks. Open debate among ministers is a key principle of the Canadian system of government. Actively keeping parliamentarians from knowing the cost of the bills on which they are asked to vote certainly is not.
Yet this is precisely what the Harper government did by withholding these documents. Some bills, including one that sees inmates serve a much longer proportion of their sentence, have already been adopted, while others died when the election was called. The costs of the bills that have already been passed were not included in the budget, but have already been rolled into the Correctional Service of Canada’s regular funding. The government released incomplete versions of the estimates for these bills to the committee examining the contempt charge last week, none of which appeared to be cabinet confidences despite the government’s claims otherwise.
While Michael Ignatieff is eager to present the Conservative government’s contemptuous behaviour as just the most recent in a string of undemocratic abuses of power, the government’s refusal to release the estimates is especially egregious. No government in Canadian history has ever been found in contempt. Indeed, no government has ever tried to withhold information about such a key part of its legislative agenda. Liberal governments are guilty of deep lapses in judgment and abuses of power — the most recent and serious of which was the sponsorship scandal — but they have never undermined parliament’s ability to review the government’s proposals.
It is because of this tremendous breach by the Harper government of its parliamentary duties that it was found in contempt and that Canadians will be voting in a federal election on May 2. No one is eager for an election, as it will be costly and will disrupt the passage of several bills, including a private member’s bills which would improve access for developing countries to Canadian-manufactured generic drug medications. It is clear, however, that an election is necessary because the Conservatives refuse to govern in a way that makes it possible for parliament to effectively consider and responsibly vote for its legislative proposals.
This election will give Canadians a chance to express their feelings about what kind of government they want. No matter our political sympathies, Canadians will hopefully pause before they cast their ballots and ask themselves whether they want a government that deceives their representatives in order to get its legislative agenda adopted. If so, then it will be increasingly unclear whether we can truly call Canada a democracy. While it is certainly not feasible for parliamentarians to scrutinize every proposal in detail, it is equally certain that they cannot be expected to vote on major legislation without knowing the costs.
Opposition parties should commit at the outset of the campaign that they would not govern the way that the Harper government has and that they would make it their first priority to prevent any future government from behaving the way that the Conservatives have. This means clearing up the rules about what kind of information the government can withhold and when, and providing parliamentarians an independent means of estimating the costs of the government’s proposals by increasing the funding for the parliamentary budget officer. While this may not be an election that any one wants, it certainly is one that we desperately need.
