Shorter

Shorter Andrew Coyne:

I'm shocked SHOCKED that the Liberals and NDP are not sufficiently outraged at what the Harper Conservatives are doing now.

So what are they doing now? Well, here's Bill 38:

The bill runs to more than 420 pages. It amends some 60 different acts, repeals half a dozen, and adds three more, including a completely rewritten Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It ranges far beyond the traditional budget concerns of taxing and spending, making changes in policy across a number of fields from immigration (among other changes, it erases at a stroke the entire backlog of applications under the skilled worker program), to telecommunications (opening the door, slightly, to foreign ownership), to land codes on native reservations.

But nowhere in Coyne's column is a statement that the Harper Conservatives are wrong to try to govern this way. Instead, somehow, this is all Parliament's fault.

. . . the increasing use of these omnibills extends Parliament’s powerlessness in all directions: it has become, if you will, omnimpotent — a ceremonial body, little more. What is worse, it cannot even seem to rouse itself to its own defence . . . today’s Parliament is so accustomed to these indignities that it barely registers.

Gee, isn't it just too bad that we don't have some people watching what goes on in Parliament who could maybe tell us what's going on there, or maybe even criticize it, or something. Oh, well....