“We agree on the same goal, but it’s very clear that I work very closely right now with the Liberal Party and the Liberal Party is working with the Greens. I also work with the Bloc,” Green Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) told The Hill Times last week. “Having met with [NDP House Leader] Nathan Cullen, I’d say we’re heading in the same direction, but they’re not sharing their strategies to the same extent.”
Ms. May, who tabled more than 200 substantive amendments to Bill C-38, said she is not critical of the NDP’s choice to go at their strategy alone when dealing with the 425-page bill which amends 70 acts of Parliament.
“They’re the official opposition, they can decide how they want to go forward. I find out what their strategy is through the media, but I don’t mind because they have the same goal I have,” she said.
As an MP who is not recognized as part of an official party in the House of Commons, Ms. May is not allowed to sit on committees. She is therefore allowed to bring forward amendments that may or may not have been already introduced at committee hearings.
The Liberals and NDP, however, are only allowed to introduce amendments that delete clauses at report stage as they had opportunities to introduce substantive amendments at the Finance Committee. The Liberals introduced 503 of them last Thursday and the NDP introduced 506.
Liberal interns camped outside of the House of Commons journals branch on the ground floor of Centre Block last Wednesday evening in order to be the first party to submit amendments.
As the Liberals and NDP are only deleting clauses in the bill, and their amendments are most likely very similar, Parliamentary procedure states that the journals branch, after reviewing all the amendments, will drop similar amendments that came in after the first ones were received.
When report stage debate begins, there will most likely be approximately 750 amendments to move forward. If they remain as individual amendments and not grouped, Members of Parliament could be in their seats for 187.5 hours, or almost eight days consecutively, when voting on those amendments begins. This means that MPs must stay in their seats or risk losing a vote.
Ms. May, who brought up a point of order on Bill C-38 last week, arguing that it is not a proper omnibus bill and therefore the Speaker should force the government to withdraw it, said she hopes the House Speaker rules in her favour to prevent the procedural tactic from beginning.
“That would be a very good result for everyone around here, because I’ve got a lot of friends from all sides of the House who are saying, ‘How long do we have to stay in their seats and vote? How are we going to get through all that?’ ” she said.
Liberal House Leader Marc Garneau (Westmount-Ville Marie, Que.) noted last week that his party has a lot of experienced procedural wonks and that everything they’ve done so far has been on purpose.
“If you look at the timeline, the Liberals came out first and said we were going to do very acceptable report stage amendments which will delete clauses. We first did that and we also said we’re going to work with Elizabeth May. At that point, I had been to Nathan and said, ‘You know, we can work together if you want us to work together’ and he sort of smiled but didn’t take me up on my offer. We have in the Liberal Party, excuse me for bragging, but some very experienced procedures people. They’ve been around a long time and we know procedures well,” he said, noting that Hugo Dompierre and Jamie Innes both studied under the late Liberal procedural guru Jerry Yanover for years. “We think that we’ve been approaching this in a very intelligent manner. Everything is deliberate and we’re happy to work with all of the parties.”
Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski (Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre, Sask.) criticized the opposition for its filibuster and said the government is still determined to pass the bill as presented.
“It’s quite apparent they’re not interested in debating the bill, they’re just trying to kill the bill. A thousand amendments, most of which is to delete clauses means they’re not serious about anything but trying to delay and if possible to stop the bill from implementation. We on the other hand are trying to get the budget bill passed because we want to continue with the economic recovery. That’s what Canadians care about, that’s what we plan to do,” he said. “Our priority is to get the budget bill passed. That’s it. Bottom line. Full stop.”
NDP MP Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park, Ont.), her party’s finance critic, said, however, that the opposition is determined to do everything it can to separate the “Trojan horse” bill.
“Obviously the Conservatives have more Members of Parliament. They have more votes, but the voting process could take a long time and it just takes one mistake to lose a vote,” she said, noting that the Finance Committee went through the bill’s study at “breakneck speed” with only a five-minute debate on 67 pages of environmental legislative changes. “We saw last [week] there was a surprise tie vote. So, you never know what’s going to happen and that’s why the act voting in person, standing in one’s place, standing up to count your vote is so important. You can never guarantee what the outcome is going to be.”
Ms. Nash, who said she worked with Liberal finance critic Scott Brison (Kings Hants, N.S.) on the House Finance Committee, added: “We’re very determined to stand up for Canadians and defend what we believe is in the interest of Canadians and we do not believe that this omnibus budget bill, this Trojan horse of so many far reaching changes is in the best interest of Canadians. So we don’t want to make any mistakes with that.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
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