Scott Reid – a check on emergency powers

Apr 22, 2020

Scott Reid, MP for Lanark Frontenac Kingston, is one of the longest serving MP’s in Canadian politics, and is also a student of parliamentary democracy around the world, He has been pushing for more parliamentary oversight over the government, even during these unprecedented circumstances.

Back on March 24, the Liberal and Conservative Parties were wrangling over emergency legislation. Reid insisted on attending an emergency sitting of Parliament against his own party’s recommendation. He also said, when he arrived, that he was not going to provide the unanimous consent needed to pass an emergency relief bill in a single sitting.

The bill was an important one for many Canadians. It made possible the COVID Emergency Relief Benefits (CERB) which provides $2,000 per month for Canadians who have lost work due to the pandemic.

In the end, Reid did not come back to the late night sitting and the bill passed, as expected, but the point he was making at the time was that he had the right and obligation, as an elected member of the house, to resist what he saw as a breach of the democratic principles which underpin our system.

As he wrote later that day in a post to his MP website “Why I am in the house today” he had “no objection to the relief measures bill passing as long as the government provides it to MPs with enough time to read and understand it.”

The reason he made a point of attending on March 24 was because in an earlier emergency session, on March 13, measures that were passed by unanimous consent, “included two provisions which are blatantly unconstitutional. These provisions caused the House of Commons to adopt Bills that had not yet been given what we call “First Reading.

“In other words, the House adopted Bills that it had not actually seen, and whose contents were therefore unknown to the Members of the House. More colloquially, the House agreed to buy a pig in a poke (or, more correctly, several pigs in a poke, since more than one Bill was thereby enacted).”

At the end of the day, as the party’s squabbled over the relief measures on March 24, the sitting extended into the early hours of March 25, and Reid did not show up at that late night sitting to vote against the motion.

Reid was not removed from his party caucus for showing up on March 24, which he admits he considers as a possible outcome, and he feels he made the point that the house can resist efforts to circumvent its processes, even in the midst of a national crisis.

This week, as a debate over how Parliament will operate in the context of social distancing, Reid took the position that all MP’s could attend a session, noting that the Irish Dail is planning to rent the Dublin Convention so they can allow the entire membership to participate and pass legislation.

“The Canadian Medical Association outlined how it could work. They did not recommend it be done, to be fair, but they also provided a way to do it, with distancing, masks, and other measures. I just think the house should be sitting.”

When the Canadian Parliament did meet on Monday, April 20, for a one day session, Reid was in attendance, this time as one of the designated members of the Conservative Party.

He participated in question period, asking questions that were responded to by Health Minister Patty Hajdu, and House Leader Pablo Rodriguez.

Again, the questions related to process and accountability. Of Minster Hajdu he asked why the documents public containing some of the data and discussions around the early government response to COVID-10, were provided with redactions that were made by the government instead of the non-partisan law clerk of the house.

In her response, Patty Hajdu did not talk about the redactions themselves, instead repeating that the government has been consulting widely and sharing information about COVID-19. Reid rephrased the question, but Hajdu doubled down on her first response.

His second question concerned the fact that Parliamentary committees, which have and will be meeting through virtual means, are not able to make motions during their meetings, which is a normal part of their function. Again, Rodriguez did not give a direct answer.

After 20 years in the house, Scott Reid was not surprised that his questions were not answered.

“That is common with the Liberals, and the Conservatives did that as well when we were in power. The way these questions are answered, or the information they are looking for is released, id if they get picked up afterwards by politicians and the media and some pressure builds,” he said.

During the COVID crisis, Reid thinks that the government’s is basically telling Canadians, “’we are competent administrators’, and my view is that only oversight would allow us all to see if everything is indeed being done well as well. We have learned through this crisis that when information about what is going on is released to the public, it has always been for the best.