Twice a year, shortly before Parliament rises for their summer or winter breaks, the push to pass as many bills as possible inevitably happens, and every single time, the crunch hits the Senate in a particularly hard way because the Commons tends to expect the Senate to pass those bills before they too rise, which is often a week or so later. This year is no different.
What is different this time, however, is the way in which the legislative agenda is being managed in the Senate. Over the past several weeks, the number of bills on the Senate's Order Paper has been piling up, in part because the Government Leader in the Senate err, "government representative," Senator Peter Harder, has by all accounts not been engaged in negotiation with the other Senate caucuses in order to work out timelines to get them passed. This is going to be further complicated by the fact that one of these government bills is the bill to legalize recreational cannabis, and the bill's sponsor wants a special process to consider that bill, which could further slow it down if they get into a protracted debate around that very question.
What is particularly of concern, however, is the question of amendments in this time crunch. The Commons is slated to rise on Friday, December 15th, but as is custom, it will likely rise on the Wednesday, shortly after the last caucus meeting of the year (which also ensures that all MPs are in town for their caucus Christmas parties). That means that if there are going to be any amendments to go back to the Commons, they need to be basically passed and back to the Commons within a week. There are about eight or nine government bills currently on the Senate's Order Paper, but some of them still haven't passed second reading. And if Harder thinks that he can get them all through the process with the requisite level of thoughtful scrutiny that he is confident that the Senate can provide, that's going to be a tough order even with the Senate sitting extra days.
There is the added wrench in the works in that the committees were all just reconstituted as well, which is a process that basically shut them down for a week, which further delayed things. And while they're still getting back up and running with new chairs and new memberships, my sources have told me that Harder's office seemed to have been oblivious to this particular complication in their plans to move legislation forward, which once again gives rise to the question of what the staff that he's accumulated with his $1.5 million budget are actually doing. Questions could be raised about the kind of procedural advice that they're offering him given that last week he attempted to move a pre-study motion on the budget implementation bill. The problem? That the point of pre-study in the Senate is to get amendments to the Commons while they are still engaged in their own committee study, so that those amendments can be incorporated at that stage. When Harder moved for the Senate to engage in pre-study, the bill had already moved to report stage in the Commons, meaning that the time to introduce amendments had passed, making pre-study redundant. Senate Liberal leader Joseph Day pointed this out, and Harder's motion was defeated, which points to the fact that there is a lack of understanding about how things are supposed to work.
And let's make no mistake there are some complications to these bills going to committee, such as the fact that it's been pointed out that the Statistics Act changes being put through never got the mandatory parliamentary review as to whether the 2005-era changes to consent around release of personal data in 92-years' time was still workable. Or the fact that there are omnibus bills now in the Senate the budget implementation bill, the Transport Modernization Act and the cannabis bill all of which may have demands to be split apart. Oh, and another complicating factor to the agenda is the fact that the newly nominated Lobbying and Official Languages Commissioners will need to also be vetted by the Senate next week, which will take up even more time.
And if there are amendments? Well, then we can expect the usual song and dance about how nobody wants to inconvenience the Commons once they rise, and this happens as we approach every break. Senators are threatened that if they send amendments back after the Commons has risen for the break, it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to recall the Commons to deal with them, and isn't it terrible that they would be so cavalier with taxpayers' money (as though MPs doing their jobs in Ottawa a little longer than they expected is some kind of a scandal).
But this is where the rhetoric around the new "independent" Senate starts to break down. For as much as Justin Trudeau, and even Senator Harder, proclaim that they want to give the Senate the time and space to be thoughtful and deliberate in their study of legislation, when it comes close to the end of a sitting, suddenly that sentiment turns to the demand that the Senate become a rubber stamp, churning through bills as quickly as possible so that everything can get royal assent before the break. We saw this with the budget implementation bill in June, where Trudeau and his House Leader, Bardish Chagger, suddenly decided that the Senate isn't allowed to amend money bills (which is false), and that doing so would violate the "rights and privileges" of the House of Commons (but they have thus far refused to spell out which rights or privileges they would be violating, even when directly asked). The Senate is only thoughtful and independent until it becomes a problem, and then they are supposed to bow down to the will of the Commons unquestioningly. We get that you want to go home for Christmas, but you did promise that the Senate was supposed to be more independent. It's time to pick a lane.
Photo Credit: Ottawa Tourism
