Conservatives impose 18 hours of debate on controversial omnibus budget bill

PARLIAMENT HILL—The majority governing Conservatives on Tuesday morning moved to cut short remaining debate on its 425-page sweeping omnibus budget bill, imposing a deadline of only 18 hours more of debate before the Tories pass the controversial legislation.

The move infuriated opposition MPs, who have vowed an all-night session of voting on 159 motions in a last-ditch attempt to at least change provisions they oppose. Some opposition MPs have already acknowledged the amendment marathon is a symbolic battle in the Conservative-dominated Commons.

“That is an outrage,” Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) said in a brief protest in the Commons after government House Leader Peter Van Loan (York Simcoe, Ont.) moved the government time-allocation motion, which once passed by the Tories will limit the first round of debate on a report from House Finance Committee hearings on the bill, to 10 hours and the final third-reading debate to eight hours.

A spokesman for Mr. Van Loan, Fraser Malcolm, told The Hill Times that debate on the report stage of the legislation is expected to end early evening Wednesday, June 12, which will be the point at which a marathon of voting on proposed opposition amendments will begin.

The final eight hours of debate will begin at noon Monday, June 18, and will likely end that evening. A vote will follow to pass the bill into the Senate.

On Monday night, the Conservatives passed a motion extending House sitting hours to midnight each day for the two weeks remaining before the Commons adjourns for its legislated and nearly-three month summer recess on Friday, June 22, to ensure that the government gets the budget bill and other priority legislation before the recess, which is set by a Parliamentary calendar that needs unanimous House consent to change.

NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley, B.C.) told the Commons that Mr. Van Loan’s motion is an example of what the opposition argues is the government’s failure to be transparent about the implications and effects of the massive bill, which, among other things, scraps existing environmental assessment law and replaces it with new measures the government plans to use to expedite massive oil and resource development projects, including the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposed to transport oilsands bitumen from northern Alberta to the British Columbia port of Kitimat for supertanker shipping to China.

“Canadians can perhaps be fearful of a government which so fears transparency,” Mr. Cullen said in response to Mr. Van Loan, noting the motion was the 26th time the government has cut short debate through time allocation or outright closure of debates.

The budget bill amends more than 70 statutes and contains more than 700 clauses, so large that Ms. May and other MPs called it unprecedented.

Mr. Van Loan and government MPs denied the bill counters House of Commons rules, and argued omnibus legislation has been used by previous governments, but the opposition quickly launched an appeal with House Speaker Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.), arguing on Monday that the motion was unprecedented and out of order.

Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz