“The government has no plans to prorogue,” Andrew MacDougall, Mr. Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) associate director of communications, told The Hill Times in response to opposition speculation the government might be planning to reset its Parliamentary agenda in the new year.
“There are too many important pieces of legislation before Parliament left to pass,” Mr. MacDougall said in an email to The Hill Times.
In follow-up questions to the statement Mr. MacDougall sent late Monday night, Mr. MacDougall on Tuesday morning also ruled out a possibility the Commons might adjourn on Dec. 9 for its Christmas break, a week earlier than its scheduled recess on Dec. 19.
Opposition MPs had been hearing rumours about the early holiday break, based in part on the fact that the Senate normally sits for a week longer than the Commons before the winter recess, as well as Parliament’s summer break, in order to complete debate and passage of legislation that has arrived from the Commons. If the Commons sits until Dec. 16, the Senate might have to continue sitting through to Dec. 23.
“Not true at all,” said Mr. MacDougall.
The government, however, has served notice to Liberal Senators that it wants the Upper Chamber to sit five days a week through to the time it recesses for Christmas, to deal with what the government has designated as bills that are “mandatory” to get through the Senate before the six-week recess begins.
The government has not publicly disclosed the legislation it designated for “mandatory” passage through the Senate, and the office of Liberal Senator James Cowan (Halifax, N.S.), the Senate opposition leader, declined to identify the bills.
But the government has used time allocation or closure on five major bills that will fulfill promises either to the majority-governing Conservatives’ core base of support, Conservatives more broadly or, in the case of legislation to add 30 seats to the House of Commons, voters generally in growing regions of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.
The other bills on which the government used time allocation to steamroll through Parliament are: Bill C-18, legislation to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly over grain marketing in Western Canada, which passed through its final vote in the House on Monday night; Bill C-10, the controversial omnibus crime legislation that the Commons Justice Committee reported back to the House last Thursday for final debate and a vote; Bill C-19, another contentious bill that will terminate the federal long-gun registry with the destruction of all its records; and Bill C-13, a Budget Implementation Act that will deliver on another Conservative election campaign promise—elimination of government subsidies for federal political parties.
The long-gun registry bill has not been included on recent lists of legislation the government wants passed prior to the Christmas recess, prompting speculation that Mr. Harper would rather have the legislation languish at least until the NDP leadership convention on March 24, to exploit divisions among the nine leadership candidates over the controversial registry.
Major legislation that the government has not pressed forward during its drive to get the crime and election-promise bills through the House are: Bill C-11, a long-promised overhaul of the Copyright Act that is still under study by a special legislative committee of the Commons; Bill C-4, which will tighten refugee admissions to Canada and also curb human smuggling of refugees, which was last debated in the Commons on Oct. 3; and Bill C-7, legislation to limit Senate terms, a controversial proposal opposed by several provinces on grounds it is a back-door Constitutional amendment.
To fulfill a promise Mr. Harper made during the campaign for the federal election last May, the Senate must get the omnibus crime bill passed by March.
Origin
Source: Hill Times
No comments:
Post a Comment