Democracy in action? Part two

I’m not naïve about the systemic advocacy work I have been doing for the past 20 years. I know better than to hope for substantive success, regardless of what political party is in power or whether the issue is provincial or federal in nature.

However, there have been better times and there have been worse times. Provincially, the years under the leadership of Premier Kathleen Wynne were some of the best times there have been, which is perhaps why the bad times of the present government seem especially bad.

Federally, for all the criticisms that can be levelled at Justin Trudeau’s government, the past decade has seen some meaningful improvements to the understanding of gender-based violence as well as some positive changes to laws and infrastructure.

Perhaps one of the biggest differences between Liberal and Conservative governments at both the federal and provincial levels is in the quality of the discussions we have. Liberal politicians seem to be – for the most part – genuinely interested in dialogue and learning about GBV-related issues. Sure, they like to hear the sound of their own voices a little too much, but there is sincerity in their approach to consultations, committee hearings and the like.

This is largely lacking when the Conservatives are in charge. They really don’t want to talk to people like me at all; they ignore recommendations from inquests and the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee; they do things like disband the Violence Against Women Roundtable.

Last week, I wrote that I had seen two recent examples of Conservative manipulation of the committee process on issues related to violence against women. Now, I have seen three.

Number one

In February, I appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to speak about the criminalization of coercive control. About halfway through my appearance, as MPs were beginning to ask the witnesses questions, one of the Conservative members ceded his time to another Conservative MP — not a member of the committee — who launched into a long harangue about Robert Pickton and the soft-on-crime Liberals.

She had no questions for me or the other witnesses. Rather, she was there to present a motion –which I have since learned is called a dilatory motion – that would mess up the committee process and prevent the hearings from proceeding. Dealing with the dilatory motion used up the time that should have been available for committee members to ask the witnesses questions about the bill. Those of us who were sitting at the committee table waiting to answer those unasked questions were left wondering what was going on. Eventually, the meeting limped to its end, and we wandered off, more than a bit perturbed by what we had just witnessed.

Number two

In March, Ontario’s NDP introduced Bill 173. The majority Conservative government, after supporting the bill at first reading, sent it off to the justice policy committee in June for further study.

Sounds good, right? This is democracy in action – letting politicians hear from community experts and the public to help it make its decisions.

In this case, though, the Bill contains but one sentence:

“The Government of Ontario shall recognize that intimate partner violence is an epidemic”

What further study is needed? We already know that IPV has reached epidemic proportions. There is ample evidence from reports of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, from academic- and community-based research; heck, from media coverage of gender-based violence. Almost 100 Ontario municipalities have acted on the first recommendation from the CKW inquest jury, making the declaration on their own.

Calling hearings that aren’t needed is an excellent diversionary tactic – the government can look like it’s doing something while actually doing nothing at all. It’s also a distraction from the important daily work of supporting survivors of IPV for organizations – most of which rely on the province for funding — that may feel an obligation to appear. Many have put countless hours into preparing written briefs that, as the committee chair has instructed, need to contain not just proposed solutions but business cases to support them, along with detailed budgets. Turnaround times were short, especially at this time of year, when staff often have vacation time booked. I popped in and out of the hearings, by zoom, and saw more than one witness appearing from their cottage or other holiday destination.

With great respect to the organizations that have provided the committee with excellent ideas and to the non-Conservative members of the committee – especially the NDP — who have a sincere commitment to ensuring this process has meaning, this whole show was entirely unnecessary. We have a roadmap for improving responses to IPV while also working to eradicate it. What we lack is the political will to follow it.

Number three

A recent meeting of the federal status of women committee, chaired by a Conservative MP, rapidly fell apart because of some less than friendly decisions made by the chair. She called the meeting with only a few days’ notice, inviting witnesses the Conservatives were interested in hearing. Unlike the informal protocol that is usually followed, she did not offer the other committee members the opportunity to invite witnesses.

The hearing was to discuss violence against women, and this time it was a Liberal committee member who brought the dilatory motion, as a kind of resistance to the apparently somewhat underhanded actions of the Conservatives. Chaos rapidly ensued, with committee members bringing point of order after point of order and the chair turning repeatedly to the clerk for procedural clarifications. The Liberal and NDP members had a strategy (and, between them, the majority of committee seats) that derailed the meeting, but the witnesses – one of them a survivor of intimate partner violence – were ignored and left wondering what on earth was going on. Their attempts to ask questions were unsuccessful. Eventually, they turned their backs to the committee and, shortly thereafter, left the committee room.

Popular opinion, based largely on media coverage that lacked any nuance about what had happened, seems to be that the Liberals are to blame for the circus and, in particular, for disrespecting the witnesses. I don’t agree. I watched the meeting, and it’s clear that the problem was rooted in the Conservative strategy to call a meeting with little notice and without giving non-Conservative members an opportunity to invite witnesses.

Were there other options available to the Liberals and NDP? Sure. They could have ignored the Conservative shenanigans and let the meeting unfold without disruption, but this is politics – once the gauntlet has been thrown down, it’s hard not to respond in kind. They could have refused to attend the meeting, but that could also have been interpreted as showing disrespect to the witnesses and to the issue of violence against women.  They made a decision with little time to plan, and then they executed it. Despite disrupting the questioning of the witnesses, they – NDP MPP Leah Kazan in particular – made powerful statements about the issue of violence against women, drawing attention to, among other things, the fact that no Indigenous witnesses had been invited, as well as about the importance of collegiality among committee members.

I’m left asking myself where the democracy in action is in any of these stories.

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