Or is it? The Mike Duffy trial opens today and the media circus with it. But is this examination of the Wright-Duffy $90,000 payment and related matters just bread and circuses or a serious constitutional moment?
By that I don’t mean will we finally fix the Senate? As I’ve argued elsewhere, we can’t until we fix much deeper structural problems in our Constitution reflected in the unworkable, nay incomprehensible amending formula. What I mean is, will we hold the branch that does matter to account, the “4th branch,” the cabinet that is half legislature and half executive and dominates both in an unhealthy fusion with the PMO at its apex?
The inner workings of government
Keep track of who’s doing what to get federal policy made. In The Functionary.
The Functionary
Our newsletter about the public service.
Nominated for a Digital Publishing Award.
Andrew Coyne in today’s National Post (and Ottawa Citizen and others) is marvellously scathing on how happy various parties should be that they can finally prove their tales about this sordid business were true. Especially the Prime Minister. And here’s the serious issue.
The inner workings of government
Keep track of who’s doing what to get federal policy made. In The Functionary.
The Functionary
Our newsletter about the public service.
Nominated for a Digital Publishing Award.
Few people think much of the Senate these days and it has little power. But the PMO increasingly dominates every aspect of government in Canada other than the judiciary. And if we do not find out what the Prime Minister knew, when he knew it, and why his story kept changing, we will have missed an important opportunity to insist that we still have a government of laws not men.
