Friday, June 16, 2006
Yup ...that's me!!! I have been slacking on my blog! I have been so busy with things I have been a blog neglector!
I had 9 kiddies in my house yesterday! Oh the insanity!!! I am surprised I didn't become an alcoholic or a pill popper after yesterday....holy crap what a day. If I was a drinker...i'm telling ya...after the last kid left, I would have broken open a bottle of Vodka!
So Bill C-291 rights for unborn victims was up for debate yesterday. I am so disappointed and ashamed to be Canadian right now! I was emailed a copy of the notes.....I was floored as to what has happened and what was said. I am not sure if I am allowed to do this...but I guess it is public record....when it all comes down to it...this Bill never had a chance from the start...if you would like to read the whole debate I will try and post a link to it. Here is the bottom line outcome of Bill C-291
Mr. Leon Benoit (Vegreville—Wainwright, CPC): Quote
Earlier this month my bill was deemed non-votable because it was declared by a committee to be clearly unconstitutional. This is quite extraordinary since at least three lawyers, with experience in criminal law, have said that it is not clear at all that it violates the charter. They were quite surprised at the decision taken by the committee.
Although the justice minister said in his opinion that it was unconstitutional, that standard is not good enough to deem a bill to be non-votable. That is an opinion from the justice minister. We see judges on both sides of a lot of issues with opinions. Therefore, clearly, the bill should not have been deemed non-votable, because it is not clearly unconstitutional. There is reason for debate on that.
The Standing Orders clearly state that in order to be deemed non-votable with respect to constitutionality, it must clearly violate the Constitution, including the charter. The committee provided no proof that my bill met that sense of certainty.
Sadly, what happened is the process was abused and the constitutional criteria was used simply as a convenient excuse when all opposition members collaborated to prevent my bill from coming to a democratic vote in the House. The reason I believe, although who can ever judge for sure, is that some people do not want to deal with this issue because they believe it is a thorny issue for some reason.
Having been through the process of having a private member's bill deemed non-votable for reasons that seem to be, to quote one lawyer's opinion on what happened, “disingenuous”, I am in a far better position than I otherwise would have been to comment on how manifestly unfair the current process is and to suggest possibilities for improvement.
The current process allows five members of the subcommittee on private members' business to decide on the votability of a private member's bill, in secret. They deemed that my bill was clearly unconstitutional without providing any information whatsoever on how the charter would supposedly be violated, nor what part of my bill was in violation. I had to guess. This is like taking someone to court and asking them to defend themselves without telling them with what they are being charged.
I went to the full committee and appealed, not knowing the reason and having no way to find out the reasons for my bill being rejected as a votable bill in the first place. How was I supposed to present any kind of a reasonable defence for what had happened?
However, even changing this is not likely sufficient to present the process from being abused, as we have seen happen with my bill. Because even after I had my chance to defend the bill to the main committee, albeit only in a generic way because I did not know exactly what the problems were supposed to be, the committee upheld the subcommittee decision. All opposition members voted against making my bill votable, in spite of the fact that it clearly was not unconstitutional. This was a sad political process to an end rather than respect the intent of private members' business, which is to have fair and honest debate on private members' bills.
If they had even said that they were unsure if it were unconstitutional, we could have debated it, voted on it and if the vote was passed, it would go to committee and amendments could be made.
I have changed the bill so that, when it comes to the House again by someone else at some time, there will be no constitutional issue whatsoever. I believe at that time it will be supported by most members in the House.
Well ladies....i am out of here....remember that
Treasures to Scrap is having there birthay Bash this weekend.....later dudes!
8:49 AM
Tammy.
