These proposed new procedural changes are part of a multifaceted proposal announced by Government Speaker Mark Hollande, seeking to change part of the way Parliament conducts its work until the end of the spring session. However, apart from a week-long break at the end of May, this House is scheduled to meet directly by 23 June. However, if this proposal is approved as it has been drafted, the Liberals will have the opportunity to get up in the Chamber, submitting “without warning, a proposal to suspend the Parliament until Monday, September 19, 2022”. The proposal would not have time for discussion and would be put to the vote immediately. While the move would have to be supported by a majority of MPs to pass, decisions on early suspension of the House of Commons are usually taken by unanimous consent. In an interview, Hollande said that although he did not specify the move, it was “his intention” to use this clause only in the last week of the meeting. He said it would be used in a situation where if MPs did all their work during one of the late nights in the chamber, it would make it easier to postpone it immediately instead of having to return the next day just to get things done. . “We have no intention of not sitting down until the end of June,” Holland said, vowing not to be used to unplug the meeting weeks earlier. “It simply came to our notice then [motion] is to give us more time to do more. “ However, Conservative House Speaker John Brasard is not convinced. “What they are proposing in relation to this proposal is absurd,” he told CTVNews.ca, equating the power to give Prime Minister Justin Trinto the power to “shut down parliament” while removing the tools available to opposition parties to hold on. the government to be accountable. “There are important issues facing this country,” he said, referring to inflation, the war in Ukraine, the study on invoking the emergency law and the recently renewed questions surrounding the RCMP investigating Prime Minister Aga Khan’s vacation. . “We need to focus on working on these issues,” Brassard said.
MONTHS OF MIDNIGHT CONFERENCES?
In contrast to the move to close the spring meeting possibly early, the Liberals are also trying to make it possible for meeting days to be extended until midnight to create more talk time for government companies. The resolution proposes that any minister, with the support of a parliamentary speaker from one of the opposition parties, can stand in Parliament until 6:30 p.m. and request the extension of the adjournment time until 12:00 a.m. or whenever earlier in the night that the conversation collapses. According to this change, in the days of the opposition, their proposals should be completed early in the evening before spending the night in liberal law. It also prohibits the movement of “expansive moves”, such as the movement to interrupt the Parliament or the transition to another phase of work. It is common for the government to move to extend meeting hours in the weeks leading up to the summer recess, but this proposal comes almost two months before the planned postponement. These proposals are accompanied by some other programming changes that set out modified procedures for when certain moves and votes, such as those for estimates, can be moved or conducted, with the possibility of postponing some until the fall. The Conservatives also suggested that the way the quorum resolution was formulated could see little participation in these debates by the Liberal MPs, and would also encroach on the time normally used for MPs to travel to and from their riding. While the extension of the sitting hours gives MPs more time to discuss basic bills, it also has implications for the administration of the House of Commons, resulting in late nights for all staff working to keep the building in operation. as well as have negative effects on parliamentary committees. “It is well documented how extensive these resources have been as a result of the virtual meetings,” Brassard said. “Proposing an extension of the schedule is, in my opinion, not the right way to act at this point.” While Hollande said he would rather not have to spend the spring burning midnight oil, from his own point of view, promoting this proposal has to do with adding discussion time to see a move on their legislative agenda before a multi-month summer break. And, that such procedural proposals are needed only because of the “obstruction pattern” of the Conservatives. A recent example cited by the Liberals is the C-8 bill, which seeks to implement fiscal measures from the December 2021 budget briefing. After being tabled late last year, it continues to work in this House after more than 10 days of debate. Hollande said the only party still claiming to have lawmakers who want to talk about the bill is the Conservatives, while the Conservatives claim that the Liberals have avoided imposing time allocation because it will not be supported by the NDP. “If they want to have all this extra time to talk, we need more hours in the diary. “It’s not acceptable to Canadians that we are not passing legislation,” Hollande said. Asked about the accusation of unjustified obstruction, Brasar accused the Liberals of promoting a “false narrative” and that they did not use the existing mechanisms in Parliament to advance their bills. “They will try to find every excuse in the book to justify it,” he said. “I will not accept any responsibility for the mismanagement of its legislative agenda by the government.”
CHANGE OF PERMANENT ORDER HOLIDAYS
And, in addition to the time-limited elements of the proposal, the Liberals are also trying to make a permanent change to the Rules of Procedure – the rules governing the House of Commons – to change the holiday guidelines. The resolution seeks to update the list of federal holidays on which the House will not meet, to include Easter Monday and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It also changes “Sovereignty Day” to “Canada Day” and specifies when certain holidays fall on Tuesday, MPs will not sit the day before, nor on Fridays following the holidays that fall on Thursday. Although this move is unlikely to be controversial, the convention in Parliament was to make changes to standing orders only with the support of all parties. An impending revision of the Ordinances is planned and Conservatives are wondering why the government did not expect to propose this household change through this process. Hollande said it was his intention not to spend extra time in the House dealing with this “small” administrative issue. The proposal is set to be tabled and debated in Parliament “immediately” and Hollande says he is open to “reasonable” amendments, which Brassard has signaled will come. “I think there are some things we can do about it. I will work with the head of the Government House to try to make this thing work differently from what you know, the sledgehammer that seems to be.” Either way, the Liberals hope that their partners in the trust and offer agreement, the NDP, will support their proposal.
