Edmonton-St. Albert MP Brent Rathgeber killed his own bill this year.
It’s not confirmed, but it’s possibly the first time an MP declined to bring forward his own transparency bill at report stage.
“I guess I made history,” Rathgeber said in a year-end review on Monday.
In February, Rathgeber decided to not move his bill, which would have mandated salary disclosure for civil servants, past report stage after amendments he’d suggested failed to be passed in the House of Commons.
The changes the Conservative Party made to the bill in 2013 are why Rathgeber left the party, and months after the bill died he feels good about stopping it instead of letting it go ahead with a significantly higher threshold for disclosure to be required than he wanted.
“I would rather sewer the bill in the hope that somebody in some future parliament … might table another bill to deal with this matter,” he said.
Looking back on 2014, Rathgeber named two main highlights: his book was published, and his MP colleagues named him the best constituency representative.
His book has been selling OK, he said, but the feedback he’s received via formal reviews and personal comments have been good.
“To me, that’s more important than sales because the purpose of the book was to … contribute to and to some extend lead a conversation on how our democracy is failing us,” Rathgeber said.
Just a few weeks ago he was named the best constituency representative by Maclean’s magazine.
“The awards are voted on by the 308 members of Parliament, and I was recognized by my peers as the MP that best represents his constituents. It was honouring, humbling to win the award, especially in light of some of the things that I said about backbenchers in my book. So it was especially humbling that they recognized how much more effective you are to represent your constituents when you’re free from the chains of party discipline,” he said.
The tragic events in Ottawa on Oct. 22 and a legislatively unproductive fall session are the lows of 2014 for Rathgeber.
“I think Oct. 22 was a very dark day,” he said. “It was a threat to our democratic principles.”
Partisan politics are obscuring the need to address important issues like the falling price of oil, he said.
“The fall session especially was firstly unproductive, very few pieces of legislation got passed. Partisan rhetoric has been ratcheted up even by Ottawa standards, which is pretty high,” Rathgeber said. “The country has no shortage of issues but as per usual we were mired in partisan pettiness.”
However, Rathgeber feels when it comes to doing work for his constituents, one area where he’s been particularly effective is advocating against the changes to the temporary foreign worker requirements.
“I’m in a unique position where I can actually defend the employers who use this program, use it responsibly, treat their employees well and allow their employees to become productive members of Canadian society hopefully on the road to citizenship,” Rathgeber said
He hears constantly about concerns over the changes, and said he’s seeing some lessening of resolve on the part of Employment Minister Jason Kenney that might lead to some modest changes in 2015 and significant ones after the next federal election.
That next federal election is expected in fall 2015, and Rathgeber will be running as an independent.
But campaigning isn’t the only thing he’s planning to do for the year – he has plans to table up to three different bills, though he said it’s not likely they’ll make it through the consideration process before the election.
“I’m going to table balanced budget legislation. The government promised balanced budget legislation in its throne speech last October but still hasn’t delivered on it,” Rathgeber said.
He also would like to table legislation to reduce the size of cabinet and his long-planned bill to increase civilian oversight for the Communications Security Establishment Canada, one of the country’s spy agencies.
