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Parliamentary oversight, which would have ameliorated some of the legislation’s excesses, was never considered. The reasons why are instructive.

An exchange with a senior Conservative reveals the mistrust between the government and the opposition is not just between individuals, it’s systemic.

The MP said if Canada’s parliamentary culture was similar to that of the U.S., Britain or Australia, where two parties alternate in power, the government would have had no problem with parliamentarians forming a national security committee with oversight powers over all departments and agencies, since there is a degree of “maturity” about security issues.

However, Canada has had the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party as the Official Opposition. The latter has opposed every security bill and every military engagement since 1945, save (briefly) the Libya campaign, he said.

“How can we grant access to the country’s most sensitive secrets to people who want the country to fail [the Bloc] or have no confidence in the entire security apparatus [the NDP]?”

This strikes me as wandering beyond partisan arrogance into terrain that is borderline anti-democratic.

Would a Bloc MP break a sworn oath of secrecy and endanger national security for partisan advantage? Has NDP Leader Tom Mulcair broken his oath as a privy councillor to keep secret matters revealed to him in that capacity?

As Churchill told the House of Commons in 1947, “We accept in the fullest sense of the word, the settled and persistent will of the people. All this idea of a group of supermen and super-planners making the masses of the people do what they think is good for them, without any check or correction, is a violation of democracy.”