Earlier this week I received an email (yes, I read them all) warning me that a bill in Canada’s Senate, S-233, was about to pass third reading become law. The email asserted that if the bill did become law, Canadians who did not receive a COVID vaccine would no longer qualify for federal benefits such as pension and Old Age Security payments or Employment Insurance. The entire claim was, to put it gently, mistaken.
To begin with, a primer in parliamentary procedure would be useful. S-233 is a Senate bill. (You can tell by the “S” in its reference number. House of Commons bills start with a “C”.) Senate bills do not become law unless they are also passed by the House of Commons, just like House bills do not become law unless they are passed by the Senate. In other words, S-233 is not on the verge of becoming law.
But even the Senate isn’t on the verge of passing S-233. The bill was referred to the Senate’s Standing Committee on National Finance in April, one-and-a-half years after being introduced. Non-government bills such as this regularly languish in Parliament until either a prorogation occurs or a General Election is called, at which time they die.
That said, what about the claim that S-233 aims to deny unvaccinated Canadians their federal benefits? I am struggling to see what in its wording leads to this conclusion. In the first place, although I have used the term "become law" in reference to the bill, it does not, in fact, propose any law. What it does is instruct the government to study the viability of Guaranteed Minimum Income and to report back to Parliament what such a policy might look like. If the government wanted to deny Guaranteed Minimum Income to unvaccinated Canadians it would first have to pass legislation creating such a program. S-233 does not propose this, nor can it. Finance bills of this nature are strictly within the purview of the House of Commons, and it would have to be a government-sponsored bill. Private member’s bills cannot create such a national program.
So, you can rest easy – S-233 is not about to become law, and if you chose not to be “vaccinated” against COVID, you are not in danger of losing your federal benefits.
When I put these facts to a group of concerned activists, I was accused by some (not for the first time) of being either naïve for trusting the government or actually being a closet liberal. Neither of these is true. What I am is an aging and unrepentant conservative who still adheres to the commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
Yes, even when thy neighbour is a liberal.
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Conservatism: A Rediscovery explains how Anglo-American conservatism became a distinctive alternative to divine-right monarchy, Puritan theocracy, and liberal revolution. After tracing the tradition from the Wars of the Roses to Burke and across the Atlantic to the American Federalists and Lincoln, Hazony describes the rise and fall of Enlightenment liberalism after World War II and the present-day debates between neoconservatives and national conservatives over how to respond to liberalism and the woke left.
