Unelected Conservative senators have killed a climate change bill passed by the House

“The Conservatives have used their clout in the Senate stacked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to kill an NDP climate change bill that was passed by a majority of the House of Commons,” according to an item published today by the Globe and Mail.

“Without any debate in the Red Chamber,” the story continues, “Conservative senators caught their Liberal and unelected counterparts off-guard on Tuesday by calling a snap vote on Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act introduced by [New Democrat MP] Bruce Hyer…”

The bill required the federal government to set regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. The targets sought by the bill were a 25% reduction of 1990 emission levels by 2020, and an 80% reduction of those levels by 2050.

This is the first time, ever, that unelected Conservative senators have killed a bill passed by elected representatives. Although they don’t hold a majority, they were able to pass the bill by a margin of forty-three to thirty-two, due to the absence of more than fifteen Liberals from the Senate.

“This was one of the most undemocratic acts that we have ever seen in the Parliament of Canada,” Jack Layton told the press this morning. “To take power that doesn’t rightfully belong to them to kill a bill that has been adopted by a majority of the House of Commons representing a majority of Canadians is as wrong as it gets when it comes to democracy in this country.”

Mr. Hyer claimed this morning that Conservative senators had told him that they had been warned by Harper’s office not to talk about the bill publicly, or allow it to be debated. Which ought to come as no surprise, because we’ve heard that story about the Harper government before, and we’re sure to hear it again.

Mr. Hyer also argued that the vote reflects an extreme degree of hypocrisy on the part of Harper himself, who is “using the unelected Senate to kill bills that he doesn’t like, passed by the democratically elected House when Harper has spent most of his political career railing and raging when the Liberals did this.”

The Globe and Mail, however, is careful to clarify that the Liberal party has never actually done this sort of thing. “Although the Liberals used the majority they enjoyed in the Senate during the first years of the Harper government to suggest changes to a couple pieces of legislation, and one or two bills were delayed, they never killed bills that had been passed by a majority of the Commons.”

“The Liberal Senate in the past was extremely uncooperative when their party wasn’t in power, so it’s a worry,” Harper told the press prior to his election victory in 2006. “I hope that better judgment will prevail and the unelected Senate will play the role that historically it has played, which has been a useful technical role but will not try and interfere with the democratic will of the elected House.”

Evidently, “better judgment” has failed to prevail within the federal government this week – to an unprecedented and undemocratic degree.

Posted in Democracy

4 Responses to “Unelected Conservative senators have killed a climate change bill passed by the House”

  1. jason says:

    Evidently, “I want to make the Senate an elected body” seems to have fallen by the wayside, too.

  2. Matt says:

    Well, I can think of one prominent Canadian whose interests they serve. That’s a start, right?

  3. jason says:

    C’mon now, there’s no reason to bring Anne Murray into this discussion.

  4. Matt says:

    …But it couldn’t hurt, could it?