Federal Politics Journal

It is strange that the non-elected Senate in Ottawa appears to be a better watch dog today for our rights and liberties than the elected House of Commons.

The top down Harper government introduced a regressive Bill C6, The Consumers Products Safety Act , earlier this session.

The Bill provides for unprecedented levels of discretionary power to be wielded by civil servants.

Inspectors could search Private Property without a warrant and, without Court supervision, seize private property, destroy private property, take control of businesses and in some circumstances keep seized private property.

An existing appeal process would be watered down to allow appeals in future to be reviewed by the very same inspectors who investigated and possibly seized products.

Should Bill C6 become law, the onus to prove a product to be without harm could fall on sellers rather than the government being required to make their case against whoever they were examining.

In the House of Commons every party supported the Bill.

But the Senate in a Committee Hearing this week made extensive amendments to the proposed legislation.

P.C. Senator McCoy from Alberta was particularly effective in getting the Bill changed. She said "We must set up a way for people to test a decision, and that decision has to be reviewed by someone who is at arm's length, not sitting at the next desk and not sitting in the chain of control."

Senator McCoy said "For hundreds of years, the principle of responsible government has been maintained by setting up legislation such that it is a ministerial responsibility to act."

"It is unusual to give an order of this magnitude to a civil servant" she added. "Usually, the civil servant acts on behalf of a minister" she said. "That is how we keep our executive responsible to Parliament. In fact, we have only one house in Parliament that is the "responsible house," or the confidence house -- the House of Commons."

Then she added "It is that one moment for a sober second thought that has kept our people safely on the side of the law, both for those called upon to undertake inspections and those called upon to be inspected. What impels me to attend these hearings, is to ensure we protect our legal rights that we must maintain and continue to uphold in the writing of legislation as a tradition that should not be any further eroded."

Right on Senator McCoy. Hopefully the House of Commons Members will realize their serious mistake in bowing down to the Government with the passage of Bill C6 in its original form and accept Senate amendments.

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