“It’s not exactly earth-shattering and there doesn’t appear to be very important reasons why you’d want to suspend all the rules, unless the government has something else up its sleeve,” former six-term Liberal MP and House leader Don Boudria, now a lobbyist with Hill & Knowlton Strategies, said in an interview with The Hill Times last week.
Mr. Boudria said although the government did the same thing last June, it did so before proroguing Parliament in September. This time around, he said he’s convinced Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta) has something else up his sleeve for this fall.
“Does [the government] want to call an election sooner? Does the Prime Minister want to retire? Do they want to do something else that they haven’t told us about yet? It can’t be just that they want to pass Bill C-18, an Act to Amend Certain Acts Relating to Agriculture and Agri-food. Surely that’s not why they’re suspending the standing orders.”
Mr. Boudria, who served as government House leader from 1997 to 2002 in the Jean Chrétien Cabinet, is well-versed in Parliamentary tactics and strategies and was no stranger to using the arcane House rules to his party’s advantage. He said if the Conservatives are changing House rules just to advance their legislative agenda, it’s akin to “killing a mosquito with a cannon,” and he finds it hard to believe.
“I don’t think any independent observer [would say] that the list of things that are on the agenda warrants what’s happening in the House of Commons, as we speak. The suspension of the Standing Orders to do this?” said Mr. Boudria.
“I don’t buy a cannon because I found a mosquito in my House. … Whatever it is, I think Canadians probably would want to know, what is the real reason we’re doing all of these things? And they are unusual.”
Keith Beardsley, former deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Harper, told The Hill Times last week that he’s also surprised and finds this Parliamentary move unusual, as none of the bills before the House requires extra sitting hours a month in advance of the scheduled adjournment. He also noted that even if the Conservatives needed to resort to this move, they should have extended the sitting hours by a week or two in advance of adjournment for summer.
“It’s unusual to do it this early. Usually, this is done sometime towards the second week of June [because] they’re facing a deadline and they want to get out by the 20th or something, so they tend to do it,” said Mr. Beardsley, who is now the President of Cenco Public Affairs. “This was done in May, which is quite a bit earlier than normal. I am just looking at some of the bills and I haven’t seen anything that would require extra sitting hours, not at this point. They’re working their way quite nicely.”
Two weeks ago, the federal Conservatives, with the support of the federal Liberals, extended sittings until midnight and limited the opposition parties’ ability to delay legislation in the House of Commons, allowing the Tories to rapidly advance their legislative agenda before the House shuts down for the summer. On Fridays, the House doesn’t sit later than 2:30 p.m. The New Democrats opposed the motion. The extension of sitting hours gives Parliamentarians an additional five hours each day. This is equivalent to two-and-a-half extra days each week. The government is moving on Bill C-31, the Budget Implementation Act; Bill C-13, the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act; Bill C-32, the Victims Bill of Rights Act; Bill C-21, the Red Tape Reductions Act; Bill C-23, the Fair Elections Act; Bill C-24, the Canadian Citizenship Act; and Bill C-22, Vanessa’s Law, which would strengthen pharmaceutical regulations under the Food and Drugs Act.
Some NDP MPs described the restrictions on using the House procedure as the equivalent of “Parliamentary martial law.”
In interviews last week, some Conservative political insiders said people are talking about any of the three possibilities that could materialize in the coming weeks and months, but also said so far there’s no concrete evidence to support the speculation that Mr. Harper wants to step down before the next election. However, they said it’s possible that the Conservatives could go for a spring 2015 election after releasing the federal budget or prorogue Parliament prior to the start of the fall session.
The possibility of Mr. Harper resigning “has been around for a while and I would certainly think that’s something that he may be considering but we’re not seeing any other signs [of his resignation] just yet,” Mr. Beardsley said.
Mr. Beardsley said in his opinion, a spring election is likely to capitalize on the momentum of an expected surplus budget containing a number of tax cuts such as income splitting.
According to one top Conservative source, if the Prime Minister—who has led the Conservative Party for more than a decade and has been Prime Minister for about eight years—has any plans to step down before the next election, he would most likely make an announcement in the near future. That would allow for a leadership contest in October or November and give the new leader a year to put his mark on the government and get the party ready for the scheduled October 2015 election.
The source also said under that scenario that would be in keeping with Mr. Harper’s desire to leave the Conservative Party in better shape than when he won the leadership and to give the new leader about a year to prepare for an election.
“If you move much past now, you’re not creating that one-year window. There just doesn’t seem to be the sense that he’s going anywhere,” said the source, adding that he hasn’t felt there’s any pressure within the party for Mr. Harper to step down.
“He’s still viewed, rightly so, as the party’s biggest asset. So, why would you work to push the asset out?”
Tim Powers, vice-chairman of Summa Strategies, said he has not seen any signs to indicate that Mr. Harper has any plans to resign before the next election. Mr. Powers, however, said it’s possible that Parliament could be prorogued or the Conservatives could call an election next spring.
“I’ll use my emphatic language—it’s bullshit that there would be a fall election. I don’t foresee the Prime Minister stepping down anytime soon but, yes, prorogation is possible,” Mr. Powers said.
“Yes, spring election is more plausible. Of all the speculation that happens in Ottawa, which is usually baseless, this [prorogation and spring election] has some base.”
Mr. Harper in media interviews late last year denied emphatically that he would resign before the next federal election.
“It’s kind of surreal,” Mr. Harper told Global News in a year-end interview on Dec. 19, 2013.
“One day I open the paper and see that I’m planning to resign, the next day I open the paper and see that I’m calling a snap election ahead of the legislated date. We have an election scheduled in 2015 and I plan to lead the party in that.”
According to the fixed election date law passed by Parliament in May 2007 under Mr. Harper, federal elections are to be held on “the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following the previous general election.” The last federal election took place on May 2, 2011, so the next election date is Oct. 19, 2015.
But the fixed elections date law does not prohibit a Prime Minister from calling an election at another date. Prime Minister Harper used this prerogative only a year after the fixed election date law was enacted. In 2008, he convinced then-governor general Michaëlle Jean that Parliament had become “dysfunctional,” and therefore should be dissolved, triggering the 2008 general election.
NDP House leader Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster, B.C.) told The Hill Times that he doesn’t expect the Prime Minister to respect the fixed date law for the next election. His party is ensuring it’s ready whenever the election is called. He added that the question of who leads the Conservatives in the next federal election doesn’t matter to his constituents or his party.
“We have a statutory date of Oct. 19, 2015. We’re working towards that. We’ll be ready, of course, for an election at any time because we don’t expect the government—since they don’t respect democracy to begin with—we don’t expect them to respect the democratically chosen statutory date of Oct.19, 2015,” said Mr. Julian.
“It has no impact on the life of my constituents, the kind of endless speculation about who is going to be the leader of the Conservative Party.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author: ABBAS RANA, CHRIS PLECASH
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