I'm back from the convention. Get back on the hook, you. Quit twitching, and make yourself comfortable or I'll set you spinning.So. Responsibility and Accountability in Law and Government... Let me tell you, this reinforced my belief that if you like hot dogs and if you like law, you should never ever watch either being made.
There was a real all-star lineup of panelists, ranging from litigation lawyers to academicians to former premiers to current politicians. The only consensus I could find was that there was no consensus as to the definition of responsibility and accountability across domains.
This is going to make it difficult to determine who is crossing what line when it comes to the C-2 Accountability Act, which is currently under development. Opinions ranged from the "blinders-on, stay in your discipline" approach that accountability equals "sue-ability" (is it obvious that the litigation lawyer came up with this one?) to all-natural-justice approaches that included opinions like "why do we need a law to state the blindingly obvious, shouldn't we just raise our children with the proper values to begin with?".
Some speakers took us on guided tours of legal philosophers, dragging us through the dust of ages and slogging through Hart, Austin, Hobbes, Kelsen and a variety of others. It's nice to get some background, but I don't think anyone was really there for that angle.
People turned into a variety of caricatures as they took the stage and fed off the CPAC-camera-limelight. In one corner, we had hopelessly bitter academicians, declaiming everyone's motives as criminal and criticizing from the safety of their tenured ivory armchairs. Next to them, there were the younger members of parliament, making every attempt to justify the chapter and verse of the Act in question and making the point by applying juridicial bandaids to gaping endemic policy wounds one exception case at a time. When politicians took the stage, there ensued the prerequisite and invariable spouting of amusing anecdotes filled with paternalistic, evenly-paced, heavily-laden metaphoric speech; you know that they were speaking to their constituents and this was just another opportunity to appear on television in order to pander to the people who are already going to vote for them.
All in all, it was a fascinating experience. People dragged old constitutional issues out of the closet, took the opportunity to blast the RCMP, current as well as previous governments, and everyone took a few potshots at the upper and lower houses, just to keep the rhythm of the day going. I wish I could say there was more concentrated mudslinging, but I might have missed out on subtle and pointed comments here and there.
By and large, I found that panelists only scratched the surface of the topic at times and very adroitly deflected a number of very interesting questions presented to them that would have only led to embarrassing answers.
The francophone opinion had to diverge from the main herd. The very first franco speaker to take the stage immediately decided that he didn't agree with anyone at the entire conference and decided that instead of speaking about responsbility and accountability, he would speak to the topic of "imputabilite", which roughly translates to "where you assign the blame".
Nice of them to put a positive, non-finger-pointing non-scapegoatist spin on things, isn't it?
That's enough for today. I've been asked to write an opinion piece on my experience there and submit it to our school paper. Somehow I have to distill my thoughts and experiences into 250 words...
...and I don't want to lose any of the above genuine flavour.
Well, it'll be an exercise in minimalism, that's for sure.
In the meantime, enjoy today's offering.
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