We’ve spoken before about doing re-approval votes for all lifetime appointments, as a direct check on these positions without having to use the (assumed) nuclear option of a recall and a way to incentivize their communications with the Assembly so that they do not remain at risk of removal for having done no comms work with the legislature that approved their nomination to begin with.
Was debating between putting it in the Legislative Procedure Act or the Charter under Separation of Powers but opted for LegProc. Open to other ideas.
This may sound odd coming from me, but I support this measure. Consider an extremely inactive lifetime appointee. Despite their inactivity, their flawless reputation in the region might discourage people from recalling them, even if it’s what’s best for the region. In my opinion, re-approval votes help alleviate this issue.
Remove “at most” and stick to a set schedule of one year. Though rather than approve them again, I’d say we should have the option to disapprove (a failed vote means they stay in).
Further, most of the current appointments are currently greater than one year old, so we would want an accompanying resolution either setting a schedule to process them orderly, or have it only apply to appointments moving forward.
Lastly, I haven’t checked the wording of each relevant law authorizing appointments recently, but would we want to exempt certain positions like the high court (which is a co-equal branch of the government) or the CRS (which is our security organ)?
Do we need one, though? I mean, we would initiate the entire process for all appointments, to include the debate period. That would offer enough time, to me. Otherwise open to an idea for a schedule.
No. No position is so important that the Assembly should not have the power to re-approve them. The only body that the CRS cannot overrule in a state of emergency is the Assembly, after all.
If we are going to do re-approval votes or whatever they should be scheduled for the people currently in office. However, for any new appointees it makes more sense to have the vote one year after they are confirmed.
Agreed. IMO, this propose would too watered down if bodies like CRS were exempt.
I also support this change. I would propose a few edits to the text of the amendment. New draft below:
The edit to the first sentence is to clarify that reapproval votes would only apply to positions that were subject to Assembly confirmation in the first place, which I gather was the intention all along. It’s not clear why the Assembly should have the power to decline to “reapprove” appointments that it never approved in the first place (e.g., CG, FAC, DAC).
The second sentence is just to make absolutely crystal clear the consequences of the approval vote. It was obviously implied, but given the significance of a failed reapproval, I thought it would be worth making express.
Finally, I’m fairly agnostic as to whether this should be in the Charter or Legislative Procedure Act. From first principles, I would be more inclined to put it in the Charter, as the fundamental structure of our government. But there doesn’t seem to be a natural spot to put it; the separation of powers section would be the best I guess, but it’s still a bit awkward.
Well, I imagine that the Prime Minister would act expeditiously to fill the vacant positions. While it would be disruptive for a time, it strikes me that (1) this eventuality is very unlikely to come to pass and (2) if it did, the fact that the institution in question is so universally disapproved of by the Assembly is reason enough to tolerate some disruption to replace its membership.
I’d want that standard to be held across the board.
Edit: I don’t think my intent was actually that clear.
I don’t want any permanent appointments. I would prefer every “lifetime” appointment just go through an automatic re-approval vote, vice the renomination process, as a means of maintaining some protection for our more sensitive positions from political whims (aka, a PM refusing to re-appoint the entire CRS). The expectation being that these positions will largely be re-approved, with the occasional unworthy individual being removed from a post they obviously weren’t suited for.
I would really like a way of expressing opinions on how someone’s been doing in their term in whatever reapproval vote there is, an ability to express more nuance. I support the idea of either failed vote not ousting them, or an option to show disapproval without removing the person.
Full support for the provision, but wouldn’t putting it in Article IV of the Charter as a power of the Assembly also work? I don’t really mind either way though.
I feel like doing an amendment to the Charter and then a Constitutional Law defining the precise terms, including thresholds, is better than having it defined stricty in the Charter.
Treating re-approval votes as a matter of routine sounds like it strays into territory already covered by the recall mechanism. The Charter is fairly stringent about recalls — they require a supermajority, can only be initiated for certain reasons, and explicitly can’t be made for political purposes. If you’re only expecting to not re-approve individuals who are unworthy and unsuited for their position, that sounds an awful lot like a recall. The better way to treat re-confirmation votes like confirmation votes, i.e. like someone’s term is up for renewal rather than like someone is up for recall.
I agree. Not only would we have the statutorily mandated debate period, but there is nothing requiring that the vote be taken immediately after that period expires. If the Assembly wanted to take more time to debate whether particular officers should be re-approved, it could. And given the volume of positions that would be up at once in this first go-around, I would be surprised if it didn’t.
You have brought me around to this approach. Not only because you found a non-awkward place in the Charter to put the provision, but also because placing this in the Charter avoids the potential legal challenge that a sub-Charter statute is unconstitutionally regulating a term of office that is defined as indefinite in the Charter.
Could you elaborate on why? To my mind, that just creates additional legislation with no real purpose. Constitutional legislation is just as difficult to amend as the Charter, so there doesn’t seem to be any added flexibility in this arrangement.
That’s fair, but I don’t think that means that re-confirmation votes have to be treated exactly like confirmation votes in a way that substantially reduces the independence from political pressure of those offices that are subject to reapproval, i.e., CRS and the High Court. Permitting the Assembly to remove an officer via re-approval vote–even if those votes are not treated as routine–is still a higher threshold for removal than requiring that officer to be both re-appointed by the PM and re-confirmed each year. In the latter scenario, the PM alone can decide whether the officer should continue in post. I would not support that degree of political control over the Court or CRS.
In my experience, recalls can be ineffective against longtime and trusted natives whose level of activity leaves something to be desired, even when a suitable replacement is available. People often view recalls as an in-character attack. However, if re-confirmation votes happen automatically, this can be mitigated.
I think it makes the Charter look neater. But I guess it doesn’t really matter that much.
The point I made was that we should treat re-confirmation votes like confirmation votes. Those votes can be initiated automatically, but if we plan to hold appointees to the same standard as a recall in those votes, then we should just say we’ll automatically initiate a recall vote annually. The reality is that Assembly confirmation is more susceptible to political pressures than a recall vote. The Assembly can vote someone down because they think they’re incompetent, because they’re a political opponent, because they just don’t like them, or any other number of reasons that wouldn’t legally fly with a recall. If you don’t like that, then you’re probably just envisioning annually initiated recall votes. (And that’s fine! But we should be clear if everyone’s actually on the same page of what they are imagining and what the drafted amendments would actually do.)
In any case, I still find term lengths far more intuitive than just saying we have “annual” votes and leaving it to the Assembly to figure out how to schedule all of that. I also think it’s open to a bunch of incredibly pedantic interpretation that’s really unnecessary when you could just say someone is appointed for a one-year term starting on some day and that their term is renewed if the Assembly re-approves them before the start of their next term.
For instance: how long can you go without being re-approved? If ‘annual’ just means once a year, could someone be re-approved on January 1 of one year and December 31 of the next, and go almost two years without re-approval?
Conversely: how soon can you put someone up for a re-approval vote? If ‘annual’ means you can’t go for more than a year without being re-approved, surely it would be impractical to wait for it to be exactly one year. If someone is re-approved on January 1, do we have to wait for January 1 of the next year? How early can we schedule the vote? December? November? At what point does the timing become sufficiently arbitrary for it to be all but a recall in name (and in legal protections)?