“Yet another setback to any kind of progress on climate change”

Liberal senator Grant Mitchell has posted some strong words on his blog about the Bill C-311 debacle, which hit the news on Wednesday and was hotly debated yesterday.

“The defeat of the bill by Conservative Senators, against the will of elected Members of Parliament, is yet another setback to any kind of progress on climate change and further confirmation of the Conservatives’ determination to do nothing on climate change,” Mitchell says.

“The Conservative Senators’ defeat of this bill is unprecedented. Rarely has the Senate defeated a bill that has been passed by the majority of elected members of the House of Commons. On the very rare occasions when this has occurred, it has been done only at third reading after the bill had been fully debated at second reading and studied extensively at the committee stage, where Canadians were given the opportunity to be heard.

“In this case,” he continues, “193 days after Bill C-311 was presented to the Senate, not a single Conservative Senator had spoken to the bill. Moreover, the Conservative Senators killed the bill at second reading without allowing it to go to committee. There, the bill would have been studied in detail, allowing Canadians a chance to understand better how the bill would affect their lives. If the Conservatives remained committed to defeating the bill, they could have done so at the next stage, third reading…

“The bottom line is that the Conservatives voted to kill Bill C-311, an important climate change initiative. They did so without ever debating it and without even sending it to committee to hear what Canadians had to say about it. And, they did this just weeks before Canada attends international climate negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, with only a part-time Environment Minister who cannot present anything even resembling a plan.”

Posted in Democracy