Wait! I Have Another Idea

Well attacking the Liberals has done Jack no favours apparently, so I guess he felt that a different approach was necessary.

Now, I doubt that these polls will change the NDP strategy of including the Liberal party in every attack against the Con's. No, I think that's too engrained and all of them to employ this hiccup-like mantra. Conservatives, hic, like Liberals... blah, blah, blah.

Still, he seems to be looking for yet another angle to make himself and his party relevant. His latest ploy is to separate the immigration portion of the budget bill and have that sent to the immigration committee. Not as a matter of confidence, but I guess he might say, as a matter of fairness.

I'm no procedural expert, so I don't know if this can be done or not, but if it can, I think Jack has missed the obvious here.

Aside from Harper hiding important legislation in places they don't belong or might be missed and making everything under the sun a confidence motion...uh, as I recall, the whole committee thingie isn't going all that well.

Now some committee's are working just fine of course. There is the typical political wrangling, but over all they are getting through their work. The ones that are not working however, are not working for a reason.

Let's take the Environment committee. The Con's have been filibustering for 19 hours or so. Why? Well there is a bill that is before the committee and they are trying to get through the clause by clause, but damn, it holds Con's accountable for their so called environment plan and let's face it, accountability, especially on that front cannot/must not happen. Oh, did I mention the bill was drafted by Jack?

Then there is the Procedures and House Affairs committee. It too is being filibustered for months now I think. Chairs being removed, new ones elected, then quitting. A real mess and it must be said that this is one of the most important committees. Anyway, it's dysfunctional because the opposition has raised a motion to look into the Con's in and out financing scheme during the last election. Darn. There is that accountability thing again.

Let's wander over to Justice shall we? Well the chair of this one is giving 'Jumping Jack' a run for his moniker because every time the opposition puts forward a motion that Hanger doesn't like, he jumps out of his chair and leaves. Specifically, he refuses to look at the Cadman affair. Yep, the 'a' word, accountability shows up once again.

It doesn't really end there, but those are the most obvious...so let's get back to Jack.

If I understand his latest proposal, he's suggesting that the offensive portion of the budget bill be hived out and sent to the Immigration committee, a move I'm certain will be embraced by the Con's, cough, so reason of course will prevail and if not reason, certainly the will of the majority of the House will because the Con's have shown themselves to be reasonable when brought to account, right?

Is he nut's? I understand his desire to stop this bad legislation, but why not let it go to the Finance Committee, extend the hearings and sub in members from the Immigration committee when they arrive at that section and show this nonsense for what it is? Bring witnesses in, as was just done in the Senate, to really expose what this legislation will mean and let the cards fall where they may.

I do not know where the Lib's will fall on this but to bring yet another committee to a standstill, doesn't get to the heart of the matter, imo. In fact, I think it pushes it under the radar.

We need prominent stakeholders to make statements, loud statements, about how wrong this legislation is. We need the same kind of coverage that the Senate committee got yesterday in order to shake the intellectual/political malaise we see in this country.

I guess we'll have to wait to see where this goes.