NDP Reality Check: How to draft flawed Conservative laws
A new court case, involving a Justice Department lawyer taking his own department to court, sheds new light on how flawed the Conservative approach is to drafting new laws.
The employee, Edgar Schmidt, is prosecuting his own department for failing to respect its obligations when it reviews bills to be introduced in Parliament.
According to the statement filed in court by Mr. Schmidt:
The provisions require an examination whose core question is whether a proposed bill or regulation is consistent with the Bill of Rights and Charter or not (…). Instead the examinations are now focused on the core question of whether there is any possibility (even if the possibility is very slender) that a proposed bill or regulation is consistent with the Bill of Rights and Charter.
If they stopped cutting corners, Conservatives would have to go back to the drawing board less often to correct their botched bills.
For example, just this week a British Columbia Supreme Court judge ruled that a section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act on human trafficking was unconstitutional.
This is just the latest example of the Harper Conservatives’ inability to competently draft legislation – a number of aspects of their crime legislation have also been declared unconstitutional by the courts.
Canadians deserve better – they deserve a government that implements responsible, constitutional and properly reviewed laws.
