As the number of sitting days left in the current parliament continues to tick down, I continue to be genuinely curious about the size of the reckoning that prime minister Justin Trudeau's agenda will face in the Senate the closer we get to June. With the chamber's return delayed by additional construction in their new Chamber, what is already a crisis because of an overloaded Order Paper will become all the more acute in the coming weeks, especially as the government's agenda has not abated and they continue to table ambitious new bills, with several more on the way.
Add to this, some of the bills already before the Senate are facing a concerted effort by Conservatives to ensure that legislation gets defeated, and they are slowing down the process in some of those cases. While this may not be particularly significant on the surface it's the job of the opposition to oppose, and they have no obligation to speed legislation through the process just because the government wants to this has been frustrated by the lack of grown-ups in charge in the Senate who understand how things work, and who are willing to negotiate timelines for bills. This cannot be stressed enough the vast majority of the Independent senators are new and don't understand how the institution works because there is so little mentorship available to them, and much of the advice that has been offered to them has been dismissed as being partisan because it comes from established senators. Add to that, neither the Government Leader in the Senate err, "government representative," Senator Peter Harder, nor the leadership of the Independent Senators Group, seem to understand that horse-trading is how things get done in a political setting (and as "independent" as the "new" Senate may be, it's still a political institution. Deal with it). I have heard repeatedly that they consider horse-trading to be partisan and they will have no part in it and so bills languish on the Order Paper.
I would also note that among the bills that the Conservatives want to see defeated are things like the gun control bill, C-71, and the environmental assessment bill, C-69. On the former, there has been a lot of talk about trying to pass amendments at committee that would gut the bill, which apparently the Conservatives think they may have the votes to do so if they can get Liberal-turned-Non-Affiliated Senator Mobina Jaffer on side and she's not ruling anything out. Mind you, that may not help once they reach report stage and the broader Senate could easily vote down the proposed amendments, which will of course add more time to the bill, and if any of them get sent back to the Commons, well, you know the drill. As for Bill C-69, it's pretty much a certainty that it will see amendments and the government keeps insisting that they're open to them but just when we'll see them is a very open question. After all, the energy and environment committee has decided that they'll let the committee's steering committee come up with plans for cross-country hearings, so that they can hear directly from those affected. Of course, those plans may be rejected either by the committee as a whole, or by the Internal Economy committee, which oversees the budget for these things but it seems quite clear that there is an intention to drag this out for as long as possible.
There are other bills that have been slow-walking through the Senate, such as Bill C-59, which is a comprehensive bill on reforming national security legislation and institutions. The Conservatives have largely been dragging their feet on that bill, because they thought that the old C-51 under the last parliament was so great for dealing with terrorism that they want to stymie any attempts to reform its problematic aspects and bring it into Charter compliance as C-59 is looking to do. (Fun fact: C-59 also makes the necessary changes to start getting those false-positive kids off of the No-Fly List). There was no good reason for this bill to spend three months at second reading stage in the Senate and yet it was, likely because Harder and the ISG refused to negotiate timelines around it, which allowed the Conservatives to just walk all over them.
Looking through the debates on some of these bills, I am growing concerned that we are starting to see echoes of the House of Commons play out in the Other Place that senators are more concerned with speeches (that have a self-congratulatory element to them) than with the procedure involved in moving legislation. Second reading is about the principle of a bill in a properly functioning legislative body, that tends to mean the proponent and opposition lay out their case, and then send it off to committee. That was how the Senate has largely operated, particularly at second reading stage, where the government sponsor would lay out the case for the bill, the opposition critic would take what they heard under consideration, come back in a few days with the case of why they think the bill should be opposed or amended, and then off to committee it went. But we are straying from that now.
As the romance of speechifying infects the Senate, there are still many bills on the way there in the coming weeks. I am particularly concerned for the Indigenous bills on their way, such as the languages bill tabled this week in the Commons, and the child welfare reform bill that is still on its way (apparently delayed because the Indigenous groups they were consulting with didn't feel it was up to snuff). Given that Trudeau has appointed a number of new Indigenous senators who are activists in the field, I expect these bills to be subject to even more speeches, and maybe even a little scrutiny. Come June, when the Senate realizes that they have just days left on the calendar and a raft of bills to still pass before Parliament rises for the summer and an election, a reckoning is going to happen. We'll see if Trudeau's agenda can survive it.
