Get on the omnibus.
That’s MP Tony Clement’s advice to voters in Parry Sound-Muskoka. Never mind that at 443 pages, the Jobs and Growth Act isn’t likely something you’ll ever be able to plow through, leaving you to just trust your elected official and let him do the thinking for you.
Our man in Parliament is also the president of the treasury board and seems to have had a significant hand in crafting this piece of legislation.
And we’re not saying it’s bad legislation. It comes with a juicy carrot in the form of MP pension reform. They’ll still get a gold-plated retirement from their years of public service, but the price tag goes up. Instead of paying $11,000 a year, they’ll pay something more like $36,000 into their pension plan. Still a sweet deal, but it’s a little easier to swallow for us working stiffs who are hoping to be able to afford cat food when we can retire.
The age for collecting benefits will also increase from 55 to 65, to be more in line with the private sector.
Since several of us are in the same age bracket as the honourable minister, we’re hoping he keeps his home in Port Sydney and when we’re in our less-golden years he will invite us over for a little foie gras once in a while to supplement our meagre retirement diet.
That chunk of the bill is so sweet and pretty that members of Parliament actually played nice and agreed as a functioning group to break it from the rest of the behemoth and fast-track it into law.
Beyond that, we don’t know what to say. We’ve been trying to read the thing, but it’s just so huge and complicated. It will take some time and we promise to get back to you on it.
Maybe we could join a Parliament Hill book club and read it as a group. It’s not just a novel, it’s a tome.
Try to read it; we dare you. You’ll find it at www.documentcloud.org/documents/472259-c-45-jobs-and-growth-act-2012.html.
We’ve been hearing a lot of talk since the release of the bill on Thursday that the sheer size of it erodes our democratic rights. The monster can’t be properly understood or debated; it’s unwieldy and unmanageable.
The minister says that talk is just the opposition taking a contrary position. The same position the Conservatives took when Jean Chrétien released his omnibus – at a whopping 21 pages.
Then-MP Stephen Harper insisted that the bill be broken down into manageable bites, something Clement says won’t happen with Bill C- 45 beyond Friday’s severing of pension reform.
As the National’s political panel, among other pundits, decried the end of democracy in Canada as increasingly larger omnibuses run over process, Clement dismissed such criticism, saying the media is just taking a page from the opposition.
It seems the omnibus, like in the movie Speed, must continue at breakneck speed or the economy will blow up due to the global economic crisis. Sweeping reforms are necessary for the feds to navigate us safely through tumultuous economic waters. We heard that threat a lot when the first omnibus rolled through in March.
Carrots and sticks, that’s what our government offers us in explanation of its actions.
And no apologies.
PS