Filibuster

There was a dramatic flourish as Conservative MP Jeff Watson pulled his McDonald’s meal from its Golden Arches paper bag. He grinned like the Cheshire Cat when asked how long his intervention might be. “Stay tuned,” he replied. The Environment Committee was in the sixth week, or more precisely 17 and half hours of Conservative MP-led filibuster. The Conservative Minority on the Committee was blocking the discussion of the substance of Bill 377, a Private Member’s Bill put forward by NDP leader Jack Layton to put in place meaningful steps to reduce GHG in the post 2012 Kyoto period. Filibusters are more the stuff of US politics. They are entering Canadian politics, like much that smacks of US style attack politics, thanks to the Harper Conservatives. In fact, the longest filibuster in the House was led, ironically, by the beleaguered chair of the Environment Committee, Bob Mills. Mills, MP from Red Deer, stayed on his feet in the House of Commons in 2002 to block ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. He is, despite that, a decent fellow. I have always felt he has meant well, despite that historical footnote of ignominy. Now, he is clearly at his wit’s end as his colleagues create obstruction after obstruction. (At one point he actually said, “I’d like everyone to shut up…. And on another occasion, “Maybe you could all go out behind the barn, but that’s a place I don’t want to go…”) Even before Jeff Watson could get rolling with his long-winded intervention, clocking more than an hour, on why NDP Nathan Cullen’s motion (held in abeyance some weeks ago by other wrangling) to limit debate to two minutes per MP per clause on Bill 377, another Conservative MP was asking for a ruling on a point of order to demand that Liberal MP David McGuinty take down his “prop.” McGuinty had a make shift 8 x 11 piece of paper, mounted on cardboard labled “Filibuster Counter.” Next to that he had a makeshift notebook with printed numbers. At that point it read “17 Hrs.” To say the whole thing was childish would be to elevate the nature of the debate. The McDonald’s gambit was Watson’s way of saying, “I have my dinner so I can talk for hours, so go order some food.” You see, this is not the committee’s first experience of realizing all MPs will be wasting their time while Conservative MPs talk and drone on and on. When Watson finished, Mark Warawa, Parliamentary Secretary to John Baird and MP from Langley BC, took over. He spoke n lofty terms of free speech. He tied his right to strangle climate change legislation to the anniversary of Vimy Ridge. That Canadians lives were lost to protect his right to arrest democratic debate in the House committee. He invoked Lord Wilberforce and his valiant fight to abolish slavery in the British Empire, claiming that Wilberforce had spoken in the British Parliament for 40 years to end slavery. “Not in one go,” quipped Liberal MP, John Godfrey. There were moments when despite the grim display, people laughed. It was, sadly, laughable. There were many youth activists in the room (of whom I am always so proud that my eyes well up when they stand tall and tell the media why they object to the government imperiling their future by ignoring the climate crisis) At one point, the young people laughed.. Warawa attacked the youth in the room. Suggesting they had freedom to laugh because of the sacrifice of Vimy Ridge and that they had freedoms others did not have and he was standing for free speech. It was all obscene. Yes, free speech arguments were being used to strangle democracy. Parliamentary obstruction was being used to delay action on the climate crisis. Yes, the clock is ticking. But my eye is not on the filibuster counter. It is on the rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We have until 2015 to arrest the global rise in GHG. The Conservative MPs in the Environment Committee should be ashamed. They are not. In fact, they clearly love what they are doing.