Wednesday, June 09, 2010

On foregone conclusions

Lest there be any doubt, the Libs deserve all the criticism they've received (and more) for allowing the Cons' dumpster bill to pass. But it's worth noting that there was no real chance of anything different happening yesterday, when the sole vote was on C-9 in all its bloated glory.

Instead, the real chance to change matters came on the NDP's motions to strip some of the more egregious parts out of the bill to be dealt with separately - which would have actually addressed the concern about needing more time to consider the problematic parts of the bill, without necessarily provoking a confidence test since it wouldn't actually have resulted in any substantive government measures being voted down. But once the Libs voted en masse with the Cons to avoid separating anything out of C-9, there was never any realistic prospect that the Libs would find a spine when it came to the budget bill in its entirety.

No comments:

Post a Comment