reform

In lieu of burritos, might we have some further clarification?

The New Democrats have called a news conference for this morning to explain the “next steps” in their fight against C-38. Elizabeth May and the Liberals have already vowed to table 200 amendments when the bill returns to the House from committee.

Here is the text of a speech delivered Norman MacLeod, a member of the parliamentary press gallery, to the Empire Club of Canada in 1938—just about midway between Confederation and the present.

Samara has released its fourth report on the lives of MPs, including proposals for reform from those parliamentarians: reduce the power of political parties, fix Question Period, better train incoming MPs and so forth. Some of these proposals have been covered here and here. Coincidentally, Carleton’s Initiative for Parliamentary and Diplomatic Engagement will be conducting a two-day conference for MPs this weekend.

This lament for their current situation and call for congressional reform in the United States, written by former congressman Mickey Edwards, reads a lot like many of the laments for our current situation and calls for parliamentary reform here.

Peter Aucoin, the celebrated political science professor and scholar, passed away yesterday at the age of 67.

What is Harper trying to achieve?

Last month, Mark Jarvis wrote here about potential parliamentary reforms as part of our series on the House. Shortly thereafter he asked if I had any thoughts on what he’d written and eventually I got around to writing something down. In the interests of continuing the discussion, here is the email I sent to him last week.

Rob Silver suggests the Liberal party pursue a pair of democratic reforms.

From the pages of last week’s issue, a short profile of Jenni Byrne, the Conservative campaign director.

In writing about the House of Commons, I touched on one idea for reform: amending the Elections Act to take away the party leader’s say over who can and cannot run under a party’s banner, but that was just one of several suggestions I heard in talking with MPs for the piece.

PAUL WELLS on a new book that argues against government reform