What is the PMO and why should we care?

 



The PMO, Prime Minister's Office, concentrated power in Ottawa under Pierre Trudeau and has remained the third and most opaque wing of Canadian government since then. The PMO makes Canadian government similar to American government which also has 3 arms, Congress, Senate and President. In Canada we have the House of Commons, the Senate and now the PMO which is staffed by unelected party insiders who have the Prime Ministers' ear more than our elected MPs. Unlike the US, this third arm in Canada is unofficial. It is not in our constitution.


In Canada the PMO has been linked to scandals such as the Duffy trial under the Conservatives and dealings with SNC Lavalin and the We charity under the current regime. A couple of years ago the PMO quietly did “loyalty checks” on potential Supreme Court appointments, a position that is supposed to be non-partisan.


So why should we care? Don't we expect that our elected representative, a member of the ruling party, should have the ear of our PM, not unelected party insiders that have no responsibility to you or I? When Canadians go to the polls they are voting for a person to represent them in Parliament and for the party who's ideals most closely match their own. They are not voting to give the party leader one more seat so that he or she can march in with a bunch of unelected party insider hacks and run the show.


Sadly, in Trudeau's first campaign, he promised to devolve power away from the PMO. So, along with pharmacare and electoral reform we can just add that to his list of broken promises, or, as we like to put it, “say anything to get elected.”


We need to break the Liberal-Conservative cycle of scandal and bring in a clean, transparent government that Canadians can trust. Canadians deserve a government that takes the rule of law seriously, even when it’s not politically convenient.”


Please share this post to spread awareness of the PMO's power!

 

Check out the NDP's Section 5 policies for Governing In An Inclusive & Fair Canada:

https://xfer.ndp.ca/2020/documents/2018-POLICY.pdf#page=17 

 

View what we stand for at the Milton NDP Blog: https://ndpmilton.blogspot.com/

 

Support to our local riding & receive a tax credit return for your contribution! 

http://ndpmilton.ca/donate.html 

 

#miltonontario #NDP #ondp #brokenpromises #electoralreform


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lets end the surgery backlog

Image
  The number of hospital beds in Ontario remained unchanged for the last 20 years (through Liberal and Conservative governments) but Ontario’s population grew by 3 million. Now Ford plans to cut the extra beds put in place for the Pandemic despite Ontario Hospital Association recommendations to keep them. A million Ontario residents are waiting for surgery but Ford is only addressing the delays that exceed medical guidelines! So if you are waiting for surgery the government isn’t going to do a thing about it until your situation becomes critical. Here are the OHA Recommendations for budget 2022. For the 2022-23 fiscal year, annual year-over-year base operating pressure:  3.5% ($735 million)  Dedicated funding to reduce the massive backlog of procedures and services.  Continued reimbursement for COVID-related expenses and lost revenues   2022/23 to be a “learning year” to determine which of the COVID-related expenses and lost revenues plus inflationary cost...
Read more

Tax Avoidance

Image
65 years ago Canadian corporations collectively paid about the same amount of tax as private Canadians. Today private citizens collectively pay 3 times as much as Canadian corporations. “In an average year, the 102 biggest companies in Canada pay $10.5 billion less than they would if they paid tax at the official corporate tax rate.” - Toronto Star. But when Revenue Canada tries to recoup 4.4 billion due to offshore tax evasion they can expect to get, maybe half. - National Post Groups like Taxfairness have plenty of straight forward ideas to turn this around. Like a financial activities tax: “Canada’s biggest banks and insurance companies remained profitable through the financial crisis and topped the list of large corporations making higher profits than usual during the pandemic. A Financial Activities Tax could also help cool the over-heating asset market, including housing. Such a tax, as proposed by the IMF, would generate at least $7 billion annually.” The problem is not uniqu...
Read more

UNDRIP

This weekend the Globe and Mail reported that several provincial governments want more time to examine the legislation that would apply the principles of UNDRIP (the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). With this bill in place UNDRIP principles would interpret existing laws while helping to shape any future law making. The legislation is built on NDP MP Romeo Sagansh’s private members bill that passed third reading then died when the 2019 election was called. The list of detractors, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta etc. reads like a list of Conservative Provincial governments in Canada. They want more time for discussions with their “ industry stakeholders and Indigenous communities.” Notice how they put “industry stakeholders” before “Indigenous Peoples”? Of course PC governments want more time to figure out how to prevent a bill that might endanger their unfettered access to natural resources on treaty lands. Their “industry partners” might actually have to pay mineral a...
Read more