[Speaker] Congress, Immigration, and ATO

Day 2,475, 02:24 • Published in Canada Canada • by DMV3

The newly elected Speaker greeting Congress

Congress has two very important jobs, moving money out of the treasury and issuing citizenship. Other than that Congress has no real power mechanically that the CP can not do himself. Personally, I have no interest in being in Congress as it's usually just a bunch of people debating for the sake of "hearing themselves speak." The Executive branch is where all the sexy things happen. Unfortunately this month I found myself elected to Congress so I decided to make the most of it and run for Speaker.

I ran for Speaker for a couple of reasons, but the main reason was to help prevent the PTO of Canada. Back in May Congress passed legislation creating the Immigration Council (IC). I personally don't like the idea, but it's the system we have. The legislation itself is very vague and spends more time describing structure than duty. The only real line that describes function is the following:

"The mandate of the council is to confirm applicants for Canadian citizenship. They may employ any means they deem necessary to accomplish this task."

I take this line to mean it is the job of the IC to approve any and all applicants who apply for citizenship. At the beginning of the current term IC issued an announcement that we would be freezing Immigration requests. Several Congress members then decided to take it upon themselves to approve a bunch of PTOers. I was then elected Speaker, and decided enough was enough. The results are that I banned all the offending Congress members from the Congressional forums for seven days per offence.

The Speaker is granted the power to regulate and moderate Congress. The following are the pertinent parts of the Canadian Rules of Order:

Article II Section 1 Part b: impose a ban of up to one week upon any Member who takes an action is considered inappropriate

Article V Section 2: The Speaker of Congress shall be the ultimate interpreter of the Rules of Order limited only by a motion to overturn a ruling of the Speaker. Any ruling of interpretation of the Speaker may be overturned by a motion requiring a simple majority.

Some people have taken offence to my actions and have started a Motion of No Confidence. I do not take this action personally, but I believe it was a poor decision and will ultimately fail. The fact is I was heavy handed by the standards set by most Speakers, but I believe the punishments were too lenient for the offenses committed by these members of Congress. If I had the power I would ensure not one of them, including a member of my own party, ever stepped foot into Congress again.

Their actions were reckless and put the security of nation at risk. The fact is we are faced with fighting off a PTO, and if we are not successful we are faced with less appealing options down the road. My goal with pushing forward with these bans was to let Congress know that no further attempts to subvert the IC would be acceptable. The IC, while imperfect, is our only means of defense against this PTO. Anyone who violates the rulings of the IC is either a PTO member or does not care about the current PTO attempt. The PTO is very real and very dangerous.

In order to combat this PTO we will need to stop the flow of malicious immigrants into Canada and we will need all Congress members to save their cs passes for ATO operations. While the UF may not pose a threat to Canada, the fact that the PTO members do not have a party to defend actually makes them more dangerous. They will be targeting our Top Five parties and we will need superior numbers in order to defeat them. Instead of just having to attack their party, we now have to defend all Canadian parties. This means that every cs pass we can use for ATO operations could be the one that pushes our efforts over the limit we need for victory. Each month we can keep them out of the Top Five means their movement weakens, each month we keep them out means fewer members we have to fight, but even one month where they win could spell disaster for Canada. I will not stand idly by and watch this happen, and neither should the other members of Congress. From this point forward we must stand together, or we risk losing eCanada to a bunch of PTOing scumbags.