Chong’s Reform Act sabotages parliamentary democracy and needs to be defeated

My column this week on Loonie Politics looks at Michael Chong's Reform Act, which is up for a final vote in the House of Commons, and how terrible it actually is in its final wording after numerous amendments. While people seem to be inclined to like the idea of the bill, the substance is terrible, and I break down what is the matter with the bill in the column in the hopes of changing some minds.

NDP satellite offices are just one of many problems

My column this week on Loonie Politics takes a broader look at the issue of the NDP satellite offices and the demands that they repay the Commons for them. The issues underlying it date back to after the 2011 election, and based on conversations I've had with some people behind the scenes, I paint a picture of a broader problem that led to the creation of these offices, and the ways in which the party is now trying to excuse them including outright misdirection.

Paul Rochon, a veteran Finance official

My story on Lobby Monitor today is a profile of the deputy minister of Finance, Paul Rochon. This was a more difficult profile to write as the subject wasn't willing to be interviewed, and finding people who knew him turned out to be a harder task than originally thought, but eventually I made the right connections and got the profile off the ground, and it turned out pretty well in the end.

Beware the unintended consequences of being too family-friendly

I have an op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen which looks to make a contribution to the ongoing debate about how to make parliament a more "family friendly" institution for the MPs that inhabit it. While everyone brings up some standards, like cancelling Fridays or electronic votes, I caution that these changes will have unintended consequences that could damage the institution – and most especially collegiality – based on the history of changes that have been made to date.

The Phantom Parliament

My column this week on Loonie Politics looks at the pre-election landscape and the very real possibility that the House of Commons will increasingly become a ghost house as more and more MPs follow their leaders onto the early campaign trail, convinced that more votes can be found elsewhere rather than in doing their jobs – something that won't serve anyone well.

ABS town hall brings out the skeptics

I have a blog post on the Canadian Lawyer website wherein I recap a town hall meeting that took place here in Ottawa last night over the controversial Alternative Business Structures proposals that the Law Society of Upper Canada is currently contemplating. It was interesting to learn about the topic of ABS and why it's so controversial, and it was an interesting discussion to follow and then distil into a mere 500 words.

No more year-long elections, please

My column this week on Loonie Politics, the first of the New Year, takes the issue of it being an election year thanks to fixed election dates and examines if it really has made our system "more democratic" as such reform proponents like to state. It's not an argument that I buy, and I lay out reasons why including those drawn from conversations I had with government MPs in Ontario on the eve of their previous fixed election date in 2011 as to how it simply changed political calculations but still advantaged the government. With all of the (baseless) talk of a possible early election here, I felt like it was an appropriate time to remind everyone of what a sham our fixed election law really is anyway, and why it deserves to be repealed.