STOPPING OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
Foreign entities, which can currently spend up to $500 to influence elections, would not be permitted to spend anything on Canadian elections, and organizations selling ad space would not be allowed to knowingly accept advertisements from foreign entities.

ONE LOOPHOLE FOR ANOTHER
C-76 will require political parties to provide receipts for the millions taxpayers spend on election reimbursements. But the bill leaves a new loophole in its wake. A foreign entity could get around the ban on election spending by giving money to one Canadian organization, which could then pass it along to a second Canadian organization that would use the money for political purposes.

SPENDING LIMITS
A new pre-election period, beginning on June 30 of an election year, would cap the spending limit for partisan advertising and election surveys at $1.5 million.

MORE PROTECTIONS FOR PRIVATE DATA?
C-76 will require each political party to create a publicly available privacy policy that defines each party’s standards for the protection of Canadians’ personal data. In testimony given in June, Canada’s Federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien criticized the requirement as inadequate and noted that C-76 wouldn’t limit how much personal information is collected by political parties or the disclosure of personal information to others. Nor would it allow individuals access to their personal information, or require parties to seek consent before collecting information.

VOTER ACCESSIBILITY
In a bid to get more Canadians to the polls, C-76 would allow voter information cards to be used as identification, increase the number of hours advance polls are open, and reimburse political parties for accommodating persons with disabilities.

A TICKING CLOCK
Elections Canada has begun preparing for the bill’s changes, although it is uncertain if Parliament, which resumes in September, will pass C-76 quickly enough for the new measures to apply during the 2019 election.

Photo via Twitter.

The finance minister’s troubles began when he led the charge to close a tax loophole that allows the richest Canadians to shelter taxable income within personal corporations. The ham-fisted way the plan was drafted and communicated kicked a hornet’s nest of annoyed farmers, entrepreneurs, and doctors, whose outrage gave cover to the real targets—wealthy tax dodgers.

Morneau’s own personal wealth made him an immediate target for allegations of hypocrisy. First, he had to explain why he had failed to declare ownership of a French villa. Conflict of interest allegations followed when reporters discovered Morneau had sponsored pension reform legislation that would benefit his family firm, while still owning about $21 million worth of shares in the company.

Morneau initially resisted the suggestion he had done anything wrong, resting on advice he received from the parliamentary ethics commissioner. Hoping to put the mess behind him, he claimed to have sold all his remaining shares in Morneau Sheppell and donated the profits to charity. Still, the spotlight didn’t dim. In late November 2017, Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer publicly called for Morneau’s resignation, as allegations swirled that the finance minister tipped off his old man to upcoming tax code changes, urging the elder Morneau to sell more than $3 million worth of shares in late 2015.

On January 8, things swung in Morneau’s favour: the ethics commissioner cleared the minister of allegations of insider trading. The pension bill case, however, remains under investigation.

Here’s a glimpse so far:

Up for Debate

Wouldn’t it be handy if there were a debate specifically about women’s issues? There hasn’t been one since 1984. That means there has not been a debate focused on women’s issues in my lifetime. Up for Debate, an alliance of over 175 national women’s organizations, invited Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair, Justin Trudeau, and Elizabeth May to debate such issues. Mulcair was proud of the fact that he was the first to accept the invitation. Trudeau and May also accepted, and Harper did not. When the time came, Mulcair backed out. If Harper wasn’t doing it, neither would he. As a result, because two men didn’t want to play, organizers canceled the event. Up for Debate went ahead with Plan B, where one-on-one interviews with the politicians were arranged. Mulcair—the guy who backed out of the debate last second—took this opportunity to identify as a feminist. Trudeau also says that he is a proud feminist. Harper did not participate in the interviews.

I was looking forward to this debate. Very disappointed it had to be cancelled. https://t.co/q2Awq4iQcX

—    Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) August 24, 2015

Where did our debate go, @ThomasMulcair? And @pmharper? #women #GPC http://t.co/iSLL9pN4Ue pic.twitter.com/m1cQArPhnZ

— Green Party Canada (@CanadianGreens) August 24, 2015

Transcripts of full interviews:

Mulcair

Trudeau

May

Munk debate

The Munk debate is a charitable initiative of the Aurea Foundation, a right-wing organization founded by Peter and Melanie Munk of Barrick Gold. The September debate was on Canada’s foreign policy. Unlike the women’s issues debate, RSVPs to to the invitation of right-wing millionaires were quickly accepted, disheartening to say the least. May was not allowed to attend. The Munk Debates reasoning is the Green Party does not have party status. However, as a charity they are not legally allowed to support or oppose a political party. So the reason is official, not because of the boys-only nature of the Munk Debates. In the end, May used Twitter to participate in the debate. Trudeau said May should have been able to attend. Yet, he still attended, as did Mulcair and Harper.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Harper has said there really isn’t an issue around the fact that Indigenous women are over-represented among Canada’s missing and murdered women. For him, it is a non-issue that does not rank high on the Conservative radar. Not all candidates agree with him. “”Do you think that if 1,200 women who had been murdered or had gone missing in Ottawa, we’d need the United Nations to tell us to have an inquiry?” Mulcair asked at an August rally. “It would have happened a long time ago. This is about racism, that’s what this is about.” The NDP leader says he will launch a national inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women. May has said the same and Trudeau has committed to support indigenous advocacy groups.

Childcare

Women today can work! Just for less money. Oh, and often only within daycare hours—which usually do not reflect the precarious shift work so many women undertake. Currently, Harper maintains he will slash all benefits for low-income earners, including childcare. Trudeau says he will end this trend and help families with lower incomes. Mulcair promises affordable childcare, saying, like healthcare, childcare is worth the money. May agrees that childcare is kind of a big deal.

Sex Work and Bill C-36

Harper passed Bill C-36 into law, further endangering the lives of women in sex work. But actually, he is saving them, because these women need to be saved by the morals of rich white men, as do we all. (Sarcasm intended.) May says the Green Party will repeal C-36, and Trudeau said, last year, that his party would be looking at the Nordic Model. More information about parties’ positions on sex work can be found here.

Domestic Violence

Those who participated in the Up for Debate interviews touched on this subject. Prior to the debate, the only thing the Green Party addressed in terms of domestic violence, according to a Toronto Metro article published August 26, was that “false allegations” were common. OK. At least, by the time the interviews were done May, a self-described feminist changed her tune, saying Canada needs a national strategy to confront domestic violence against women. Both Mulcair and Trudeau spoke about Parliament being a boys’ club and that they will lead by example there to make it less so.And money for shelters is a good idea, says Trudeau, but it isn’t up to the federal government to create them because municipalities, he believes, should do it. So, someone is going to do something, don’t worry about it.

Abortion

Pro-choice, anti-choice, reproductive rights. Light stuff, right? Harper doesn’t actually come out and say he is anti-abortion rights. Instead he says that abortion should not be discussed within politics because it is a matter of faith and morals. And although his own faith condemns these rights, he isn’t in the good books of anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition (CPL). The Conservative party is, though. At least there is someone out there ready to police women’s bodies. Phew. The CPL hates Trudeau, so that’s a good sign for the Liberals. Mulcair’s NDP is also pro-abortion rights: “A New Democrat government will increase funding for women’s organizations, particularly women’s rights organizations. Family planning, reproductive and sexual health, including access to abortion services, must be included in Canada’s approach to maternal and child health.” May is also on Team Abortion Rights.

The Niqab

Conservatives were getting attention for doing things like peeing in people’s mugs, and that was weird. So, a distraction—I mean, very important issue—was created by the Harper government. The niqab is a veil that covers part of the face and a sign of faith worn by some Muslim women. It is also being attacked for being anti-Canadian—as decided after settler colonialism. The argument goes something like this: “My white grandparents knew what it was to be Canadian (after white folk made what it is to be Canadian tailored to said grandparents) why can’t everyone else?!”

While fostering xenophobia the Conservative party is saving women by oppressing women. Anti-Muslim propaganda is being circulated on social media and women are being attacked because of this federally accepted hatred of the “Other.”

Mulcair says this is wrong. Like, no one likes the niqab, he says, but we need to trust the authority of tribunal decisions. Trudeau is also opposed to Harper’s stance. At a Maclean’s sponsored debate the Liberal leader said:  “You can dislike the niqab. You can hold it up it is a symbol of oppression. You can try to convince your fellow citizens that it is a choice they ought not to make. This is a free country. Those are your rights. But those who would use the state’s power to restrict women’s religious freedom and freedom of expression indulge the very same repressive impulse that they profess to condemn. It is a cruel joke to claim you are liberating people from oppression by dictating in law what they can and cannot wear.” As for May, at a televised French debate she said, “It’s a false debate . . . What is the impact of the niqab on the economy, what is the impact of the niqab on climate change, what is the impact of the niqab on the unemployed?”

Fun Facts

• Trudeau addresses misogyny, in certain communities.
• May re-started a women’s caucus in Parliament.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her second year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

Did Michael Ignatieff's pro-Iraq war stance doom the Liberals? Creative Commons photo by Flickr user WmPitcher.

Listening to Michael Ignatieff address his few remaining dispirited supporters on election night, I couldn’t help but picture the room dotted with the ghosts of Baghdad. I wonder whether Ignatieff saw them too, like so many Banquos’ ghosts in the room that night as he took responsibility for his party’s dismal showing in the 2011 federal election.

Having since resigned his leadership, it may seem to rude to kick him now that he’s down. But the colossal scale of the Liberal defeat in this election can’t be fully understood unless we talk honestly about Michael Ignatieff’s career as an intellectual and politician—and the Iraq War remains central to both.

Ignatieff’s career as a Canadian politician is bound up in the war: he was first courted by backroom Liberals in the spring of 2004, as an iconic “serious” small-L liberal. (American liberalism was entering what would be years of toxic, self-destructive debate about whether “good liberals” could oppose the war.) For this type of centrist liberal, supporting the invasion of Iraq was the “serious” choice, contrasted with the dreamy foolishness of pacifism.

Paul Martin’s government, terrified that the brief moment of spine Jean Chrétien had shown by avoiding direct Canadian involvement in the war, was terrified about the state of relations with the Bush government. Ignatieff’s recruitment was a signal to the Americans and the Canadian elite that the Liberal Party could still be trusted, despite Chrétien’s heresy. It was more about distancing the Liberals from left-wing policies than the war itself.

Ignatieff wasted no time. His landmark speech to the Liberal Party in 2005 was full of rhetorical slaps at the left, but here’s my favourite, in retrospect:

“…many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.”

Results by Riding. Map by Skyscraper Forum user "Vid." Click to see more

It was only a few years ago that elections in Canada were mostly predictable. For a few solid years, we could bet on Liberals, and some NDP candidates, sweeping the country’s biggest cities. We knew the Conservatives would sweep Alberta, take most of Saskatchewan and dominate much of British Columbia. In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois seemed destined to win the lion’s share of ridings, including a healthy mix of urban and rural areas.

Elections were, for those few years, decided based on pockets of ridings across the country that swung back and forth between, for the most part, Liberals and Conservatives. So when the Liberals had a stranglehold on Ontario during the ‘90s, and benefited from that now defunct divided right, that meant they won government.

But then, slowly, the Conservatives screwed it all up for their rivals. They made those mystical “inroads” into various suburban communities, mid-sized cities and even parts of Quebec. All of a sudden, most of Ontario was voting Conservative, and the Liberals found themselves scrambling to maintain their big city leads. Stephen Harper’s team stopped growing in Quebec, but they managed to win more of the Atlantic, save for Newfoundland and Labrador, and even picked up a few more seats in B.C.

Then the writ dropped in late April of this year. That’s when all the traditional dichotomies fell apart. Suddenly, cities weren’t voting Liberal at all, with a very few exceptions. And Quebec wasn’t voting for the Bloc. High-profile MPs from across party lines—foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon, prominent Liberals Martha Hall-Findlay and Glen Pearson, and virtually every Bloc MP—fell by the wayside. Oh, as did Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe, both of whom were supposed to at least save their own bacon.

Indeed, the 41st parliament’s electoral map looks a little strange. The NDP’s roots were in rural Saskatchewan, and decades of elections helped carve out an urban base, but all of a sudden the party has an enormous, if unstable, Quebec wing. The Conservatives don’t remember what it’s like to have an MP in Toronto, but now they have several in the biggest city going. And the Liberals, who might have at least counted on popular MPs winning based on reputation, are now much lonelier in parliament.

What does all this mean? The next time the country heads to the federal polls, it means parties will have to fight campaigns in some hugely unfamiliar territory. Save for the Conservatives out west, parties can’t rely on many traditional strongholds. The urban vote is split, as is the rural vote. Barring an unprecedented resurrection, Quebec voters will have only federalists to elect.

And further, many popular incumbents aren’t safe. On May 2, 47 percent of MPs won a majority of votes in their riding. Traditionally, those might be considered safe seats. But as Alice Funke of punditsguide.ca points out, a large margin of victory in one election doesn’t guarantee any victory at all in the next election. Her stats suggest that 35 seats that weren’t very close in 2008—that is, where the winner had at least 20 percent on the second-place candidate—changed hands this time around.

As exciting and, eventually, unpredictable as this year’s election turned out to be, it really just laid the groundwork for the next trip to the polls. Whenever that happens, we’ll find out whether or not this redrawn electoral map is for real—or a historical footnote. The only thing that’s certain is that it would be silly to guess what will happen next.

This week the Green Party launched an anti-attack ad criticizing other parties for their sensational advertisements. The meta attack ad aims to benefit from Canadians’ supposed distaste for ad hominem vilification and mudslinging.

It’s commonly believed that the first attack ad was the iconic 1964 “Daisy Girl” commericial, which threatens American voters with the prospect of nuclear war (another long-held American political tradition). Attack ads returned in 1988 with the George HW Bush “revolving door” spot suggesting a candidate’s prison reforms led to an increase in violent crime.

That same year featured Canada’s NAFTA election, in which the Liberal party ran ads suggesting Canadian sovereignty was at stake. You can read about it in a CBC interactive feature documenting 10 prominent attack ads from the English-speaking world.

A 1993 Kim Campbell ad mocked Jean Chretien’s facial Bell’s palsy. Political figures decried the ad as “political desperation” and “totally inappropriate and in poor taste.” It’s a shame the same terms apply to today’s political discourse.

Conservative Senator Doug Finley, a “genius of political attack ads,” was interviewed by the Globe and Mail last month. Responding to those who believe negative ads turn off voters, his response: “Politics is an adversarial business. Kellogg’s doesn’t make their money by telling everybody General Foods are a great product.”

There’s little consensus on the effectiveness of attack ads. A 2007 psychological study suggests that although negative political ads make us want to turn away, we remember their negative messages. Some studies suggest negative and positive ads both have the same effectiveness.

Attack ads have made a lot of inroads south of the border. A study of the 2008 US presidential campaigns found that almost all McCain ads were “negative,” with many focusing on Obama’s personality over his politics. It’s gotten to the point where the hilarious “demon sheep” ad was actually used to sway voters, before it went viral and generated a spinoff.

In the past five years, attack ads have gained worldwide prominence.

An ad from the 2006 Mexican election compares one candidate with Hugo Chavez. Australia, a country with some really broken political discourse, saw the rise of attack ads in last year’s national election — including one monumentally stupid commercial.

Although such ads remain uncommon in UK elections, there’s been a recent increase in Europhobic ads — the word works for both definitions — attacking EU policy by airing stereotypes of continental neighbours.

TV ads in the 2006 São Paolo mayoral race speculated on a candidate’s supposed homosexuality. The tactic is eerily similar to a homophobic Tamil-language radio ad that aired in Toronto’s recent mayoral election.

The rollin’-in-dough Conservative party financed comparatively civil attack ads with funds allegedly arranged through the now infamous “in and out scandal” (that ironically focused on accountability and transparency). While it’s tempting to pin attack ads on one party or political persuasion, the Liberals, Bloc and NDP take part too.

These ads have repercussions on our democracy as a whole. In the 2008 election, the Conservatives made the daft choice of posting their pooping puffin ad online. The ad itself was intellectually (and otherwise) insulting. But more troubling: the Toronto Star ran a frontpage story about it.

Rick Mercer’s 2009 rant on the issue makes some pretty poignant points (and his parody ads are pretty funny, too). Attacks ads are bad for democracy. Instead of helping us debate serious issues as a society, it creates poisons our discourse with character assassination, the politics of fear, and a culture of sound bites over substance.

Canada's daycare scheme is in disarray. Creative commons photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

Advocates have long argued that a publicly funded universal daycare system would support low-income families, single parents, and working mothers. Support for variants of universal child care was a hallmark of the Mulroney, Chrétien, and Martin election platforms—but none of them made it happen.

Instead, in 2006, the then new Harper government made the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) its first major social policy initiative, paying families $100 per month for each child under six, money intended to support child-care costs. Arguing that they were giving parents more freedom in making child care decisions, the Conservatives’ UCCB was, and remains, a rejection of the very idea of universal daycare. Five years on, the problems with the new system are clear.

The UCCB is “ill conceived and inequitable,” says Ken Battle, President of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy. He raises several objections: despite the sound-bite friendly “hundred bucks a month” concept, the UCCB is actually “virtually incomprehensible” to the average citizen. That $100 is considered taxable income, so no family actually gets $1,200 a year. Furthermore, it’s actually harmed lower-income, single-parent families, who no longer receive the annual $249 young child supplement (which was quietly abolished to help pay for the UCCB). Given the complexities and perversity of the tax system, higher-income families actually receive the highest net benefit.

Battle also criticizes the social engineering implied in the UCCB, under which not all families are created equal. Two-parent families with two parents working actually pay more in taxes than two-parent families (with the same total income) with one parent staying home. This is because that extra $1,200 in yearly income is taxable in the hands of whichever parent earns less. In practice, this means the government privileges families with a stay at home parent—and because of weak pay equity regulation, that generally means mom stays home.

These are minor gripes, though, compared to the fact that the math just doesn’t work: with daycare costs often well in excess of $7,000 a year, $1,200 is simply not enough. Battle argues that in order for a system of cash payments to meaningfully reduce poverty and help families, the older Canada Child Tax Benefit would need to be boosted to $5,000 per child per year for low- and middle-income families. Food Banks Canada recommends the same figure as part of its larger argument that a well funded child care plan would be one of the most effective ways to fight hunger and child poverty.

It’s unlikely that the Conservatives will reverse direction, and the federal Liberals have now surrendered the issue, recently dropping their long-standing commitment to universal daycare. In October 2009, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff called universal daycare a “legacy” item for his party: “I am not going to allow the deficit discussion to shut down discussion in this country about social justice,” Ignatieff told the Toronto Star in Februrary 2010. Last October, however, blaming the economic forecast and Conservative spending priorities, Ignatieff announced the Liberals would no longer push for a universal public child care program.

With the feds asleep at the switch, some advocates are hopeful that the provinces will step in. Organizations like the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care point to Quebec’s high-profile $7-a-day daycare system as an example to follow. In the 10 years after its introduction in 1997, the province’s child-poverty rates declined by 50 percent. The program’s problem is that it’s too popular, with a shortage of available spaces and long waiting lists. Though the Conservatives say the UCCB is all about giving families more choice, it now obstructs universal publicly funded child care—the choice that most would like to be able to make.

UPDATE, Sept. 22, 1:55 pm: CanWest Postmedia reports that C-391 sponsor MP Candice Hoeppner “has all but conceded defeat” and “given up on last-minute lobbying” for today’s vote, and calls the eight liberals and 12 NDPers who voted in favour last time, “turncoats.” She estimates the government is one — one! — vote short, which is why it’s all hands on deck today: Jack Layton told reporters “Everybody will be there unless somebody gets struck by lighting.” The Prime Minister also flew back from New York where he was addressing the UN.

UPDATE, Sept. 22, 3:56 pm: There were questions about the registry during Question period, but seems to be nothing new to add based on that. However, Susan Delacourt just published a surprising and sad story about why Liberal MP Scott Simms, who originally voted to abolish the registry, has changed his mind today: because between the last vote and this one, his father took his own life, and the weapon he used was a long gun. Simms will not be talking about it publicly, but a colleague tweeted the story put the gun registry in “unprecedented perspective” during this morning’s Liberal caucus meeting. Addendum: Barb Adamski replies to us on Twitter that no gun registry is in a position to prevent suicides by a determined person, which it must be conceded is a fair point. However, it does not negate many other good reasons to register guns, and the fact that the story broke today is bound to be significant, no matter how indirect the connection to the vote itself. Addendum to the addendum: Delacourt explains on the Toronto Star blog why they published the story today before the vote.

*****

Today is the day that parliament will vote on bill C-391, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act. This private member’s bill (full text here), introduced by Candice Hoeppner, the Conservative MP for Portage-Lisgar, Manitoba, on May 15, 2009, if passed would bring about the end of the long gun registry, which is one component of the Canadian Firearms Program.

Note that there is a difference between a gun licence and gun registration — the RCMP describes the distinction as being analagous to a driver’s licence and vehicle registration. There are also three classes of firearms that the program regulates: non-restricted, restricted, and prohibited. Ordinary hunting rifles and shotguns have always been “non-restricted” — that is, anyone over 18 can purchase and own them as long as they’re registered and licensed.

Bill C-391 does not affect licensing requirements; the only thing the bill would repeal is the requirement to register a non-restricted firearm — i.e., a rifle used  for hunting game. The reason this distinction is important is because critics of the gun registry have focused on its cost, and they claim that repealing these requirements would save money. This claim, to put it bluntly, doesn’t hold water. The RCMP will continue to run a gun registry; almost all of the expense will continue to be incurred whether Bill C-391 passes or not.

The cost of the long gun registry has been widely misreported, misinterpreted, and deliberately overblown. An RCMP report (completed in February but not given to Parliament until August; it was promptly leaked to the CBC) has placed the cost of the long gun registry portion of the Canadian Firearms Program “in the range of $1.1 and $3.6 million per year.” The “$1 billion” figure that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other Conservative politicians have repeatedly quoted is simply not accurate. According to that same report, according to The Tyee, the $1 billion figure actually refers to the entire cost of the whole Canadian Firearms Program from 1995 to 2007.

The other source of criticism of the long-gun registry is generally perceived to split along urban-rural lines, with many game hunters unhappy at the cost and inconvenience of having to register their firearms. Hoeppner, introducing her bill, claimed that “law-abiding Canadian hunters, farmers and sport shooters … have been treated like criminals” since the introduction of the registry (in its current form) in 2001. As James Laxer noted this week on Rabble, however, the urban-rural break is a red herring. Plenty of people in the country want the registry to continue, particularly rural women. When polled, 47 percent of rural women supported the registry.

The registry’s other important support continues to be police forces themselves, who have unambiguously spoken out in support of the gun registry for years. Toronto’s Chief of Police, Bill Blair, is also president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, and testified before parliament on Bill C-391 on May 26, 2010. He was clear on the position of law enforcement on the gun registry — it’s not a panacea, it’s a tool, and a useful one.

Like all of the tools we use, the firearms registry is not a perfect, universally effective tool. Not every criminal will register their weapons. Not everyone will obey the law. It will not deter every criminal nor will it solve every crime. The police never claimed it would.

What we do claim, with the authority that comes from actually using the information contained in the Firearms Registry every day, is that it is a tool that helps us do our job.

[…] In 1994, the CACP adopted a resolution calling upon the Government of Canada to enact legislation requiring the registration of all firearms, including long guns. This is a position from which the CACP has never wavered.

Leading up to today’s vote, police forces and other pro-registry groups from across the country — from Halifax to Toronto to Vancouver — have joined together to call for the registry’s continuation. The CACP, along with the Canadian Police Association and the Canadian Association of Police Boards issued this helpful one-pager correcting the “Top 10 Myths of the Canadian Firearms Program“:

Despite all this, today’s vote is expected to be a squeaker. When C-391 was last voted on, it passed with 164 votes in favour and 137 votes against, with 8 Liberals, 12 NDPers, and one independent siding with the Conservative government.

This time around, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has pledged to keep his party members in line to vote down the bill. NDP leader Jack Layton has not whipped his party, and NDP MPs will be free to vote their conscience. (Bloc Québécois MPs will all vote opposed, as they did last time). Layton has told the press that he is confident that the bill will be defeated, and that he has persuaded enough MPs in his caucus to switch their votes.

We’ll be following what goes on as we get closer to this evening’s vote, which is expected to happen around 5:45. Keep checking back here for details, or follow us on Twitter for any quick developments that crop up today. Have any questions about C-391 we haven’t answered here, or have any tips? Leave your questions and everything else in the comments below…

Peter Milliken has had it made for almost ten years. He lives just down the hall from work, gets to throw lavish parties at a country estate, and makes a whole lot of money every year.

Such is the life of the Speaker of the House of Commons—according to the image propagated by most news sources, anyway. Canada’s parliamentary journalists love to play up the apparently extravagant lifestyle of whichever Member of Parliament is lucky enough to be elected to sit in the big chair.

They play up the Milliken’s Centre Block apartment, which is apparently actually quite cramped. They love reporting on the parties he throws at the Gatineau Park mansion, because most of them are guests at those parties. And they always make sure to note that the speaker earns almost $230,000.

What they don’t always report is the reluctance of many MPs to actually want the job.

Milliken recently announced that he won’t seek re-election as Kingston’s MP. That means the Commons will need a new speaker. So what does it take to be speaker?

First, the speaker has to be an MP. Second, they should be bilingual. And third, they need to earn the respect of their colleagues. After all, the speaker is elected by a vote of the House. Beyond that, there are some important intangibles.

In an interview, Liberal MP Glen Pearson said that the job takes moral courage. He respects what Milliken has done in the role, but said the next speaker has to be tough with each party and take no prisoners along the way. Political scientist Nelson Wiseman said the job takes patience and collegiality, along with a sense of humour to offer some relief to MPs during tense debates. NDP MP Denise Savoie, currently a deputy speaker (officially the Deputy Chair of the Committee of the Whole), said it takes a profound respect for parliament and a flawless understanding of procedure and practice.

In sum: It’s a complicated job.

What we’ve also seen over the past few years is that minority parliaments, which are apparently becoming the norm in Canada at the federal level, force the speaker into the spotlight more often than during lazy days of majority governance.

During his tenure as speaker, Milliken broke a tie vote that saved Paul Martin’s Liberal government in 2005, and he also forced the current government to disclose secret documents to opposition MPs. Those decisions never would have seen the light of day in majority parliaments.

Although it might be more than a year before Milliken is officially retired, the race for the speaker’s chair is, according to Pearson, already in full swing. Given that our elected representatives are thinking about these kinds of things during the summer months, it’s only fair we give them some material to consider.

Below is a list of MPs who might be worth considering as speaker (even if they don’t want the job). It’s by no means exhaustive and, in the spirit of fairness, presented in alphabetical order:

Michael Chong (Conservative)

When MPs speak about parliamentary or electoral or democratic reform, it’s often not very substantive. But Chong has pushed for very specific reform to the operations of parliament that have been applauded by his peers across party lines. He has introduced a motion in the House, M-517, that looks to reform Question Period. Chong suggests that questions and answers should be longer; a certain day of the week should be devoted to questioning the Prime Minister; and remaining days of the week should be devoted to certain ministers of the Crown.

Chong seems committed to improved decorum in the House. If his motion passes, someone will need to enforce it. He didn’t return our calls, so his interest in the job remains unclear.

Joe Comartin (NDP)

The experts say a speaker has to earn the respect of their colleagues. Well, Comartin has twice been chosen by his peers as the Hill’s most knowledgeable MP in annual polls published by Maclean’s. He ran for speaker in 2008, finishing fourth after enduring four rounds of balloting (Milliken won on the fifth round, over two Tory MPs).

Kirsty Duncan (Liberal)

Duncan has only been an MP since 2008. She probably hasn’t been approached by anyone about running for the job. The job takes an intimate knowledge of the parliamentary system that takes time to develop, and Duncan is part of a class of MPs that is still learning the ropes. But for all the learning she would have to undertake, Duncan has some credentials that might pique the interest of more than a few progressive political observers.

She’s already won a Nobel Prize. It’s the same prize that Al Gore won, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, back in 2007. Although she wouldn’t be able to use the speaker’s chair as a pulpit—after all, the speaker could never get away with favouring issues or parties or people—it would be something of a coup for environmentalists to have one of their own in that chair. That most climate deniers would never trust her, though, means Duncan is a long shot.

Glen Pearson (Liberal)

When the news broke that Milliken was retiring, Pearson was approached by a group of Conservative MPs who took him out for a drink. They said they thought they could work with him as a speaker. After all, Pearson is known as a non-partisan MP who gives credit where credit is due (especially on his blog).

But he doesn’t want the job. He says his command of French is not sufficient, and he’s too much of an advocate to be speaker. He didn’t get elected to be impartial, and as speaker, he would leave it to his colleagues to pursue his interests. That’s not something that interests Pearson. He certainly spoke passionately about the position, though, and he seems to be trusted by his colleagues across the floor. His endorsement of a candidate could hold a lot of power.

Denise Savoie (NDP)

Savoie has experience sitting in the speaker’s chair, and in an interview, she didn’t rule out aspirations to take over for Milliken as speaker. If Savoie were elected, she would be the first speaker who didn’t hail from either the Liberals or Conservatives. She would also be only the second woman to sit in the chair (the first was former governor general Jeanne Sauvé, who was speaker from 1980 until 1984. And she would be the first New Democratic speaker (as would Comartin).

Michelle Simson (Liberal)

The speaker does more than sit in front of rowdy MPs every day. They have various other duties, including the chairmanship of the Board of Internal Economy of the House of Commons. It’s an all-party committee that meets secretly, far away from cameras and tape recorders, to set the budget of the House. Recently, the committee was thrown into the spotlight because it initially refused to allow auditor general Sheila Fraser to scrutinize MPs’ expenses.

MPs were mostly tight-lipped about their expenses, deferring to their masters on the Board of Internal Economy. But one came out ahead of the pack and fully disclosed her expenses online: Scarborough Southwest MP Michelle Simson. If Canadians want a champion of parliamentary transparency in the speaker’s chair, perhaps they ought to look in Simson’s direction.

When Harper prorogued parliament in the closing days of 2009, Canadians took to the streets. Creative Commons photo by Fifth Business.

Britain’s five days of post-election limbo are over as David Cameron, Conservative Party leader and now Prime Minister, announced Britain’s first peacetime coalition government since the 1930s.  Ushering in an era of cross-bench unity, Cameron’s Conservatives will join forces with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democratic Party.  Cameron has appointed six Liberal Democrats to the cabinet, including Clegg as his Deputy Prime Minister.  In a press conference held today, Cameron said: “We are not just announcing a new government and new ministers. We are announcing a new politics. A new politics where the national interest is more important than party interest, where co-operation wins out over confrontation, where compromise, give and take, reasonable, civilized, grown-up behaviour is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.”  Clegg added, “Until today, we have been rivals: now we are colleagues. That says a lot about the scale of the new politics which is now beginning to unfold.”

If reading this makes you wonder, as I did, what it would take to see a similar spirit of cooperation sweep Canada’s house of commons, it’s for a good reason. Canadian minority governments—i.e., the last three consecutive ones—are strangely reluctant to form coalitions. Instead of creating solid coalition governments in which the parties are forced to negotiate—in Cameron’s words, creating “a shared agenda and a shared resolve”—Canadian parties tend only to reach across the aisle on a case-by-case basis, leading to constant brinksmanship and partisan sniping.

The exception, of course, came just six weeks after the 2008 elections when an attempted coalition between Liberals and New Democrats, with support from the Bloc Quebecois, would have ousted Stephen Harper’s conservative minority government from power, creating a majority coalition on the Hill. Harper, in response, prorogued parliament to allow the Liberal Party to consume itself with infighting and ultimately scuttle the coalition.

While Canadian politics has been defined by six years of minority government—six years during which the NDP has not meaningfully advanced the cause of proportional representation, by the way—British politicians have realized the power of broad support, and look set to overhaul their electoral system, too. It’s enough to give a Canadian a serious case of coalition envy.