Meet the new boss

No, not him.

At their first caucus meetings after the election, MPs of all the political parties declared they don't want to wield any new powers or do anything to hold their leaders accountable. The Liberals rejected all measures for leadership accountability, the Conservatives rejected most of them, and the NDP turned the whole problem over to the party convention -- which suggests how much caucus power they want!  "Yes, it's kind of a Stalinist system, letting the leader do anything he wants," admitted no MP anywhere, "but our Stalin is a great guy, so I don't see any problem."

Many journalists seemed inclined to cheer, declaring their contempt for the whole idea of leadership accountability anyway:

To muster up that particular line of outrage, however, would require one to have been a fan of the Reform Act in the first place.

For those of us who were not, the real frustration comes when one realizes what a pointless waste of time and energy the entire process has been — time and energy that could have been channelled into truly substantial, if less flashy, improvements on how the House works.

CBC's Kady O'Malley provides as her preferred alternatives a series of largely cosmetic changes that completely avoid the central issue of government accountability to the House via the caucus.

So is the Chong movement as dead as she believes?  I've always thought Chong was playing a long game, one in which simply giving MPs the idea that power is available to them whenever they choose to accept it will eventually bear fruit.  But not yet, not yet.