Having gotten off to a possibly slow start since winning re-election on September 20, Justin Trudeau’s liberal government appears poised to go into hyperdrive with the resumption of Parliament next week.
The Liberals promised more than a dozen initiatives on their electoral platform, including the introduction or reintroduction of at least eight bills, within the first 100 days of a new term.
That 100-day clock started ticking on October 26 as soon as the prime minister’s new cabinet took office.
The government will have lost almost 30 days when the new session of Parliament opens next Monday.
And he will only have 24 sitting days to get things done in the House of Commons before the time runs out on February 3, with the first two days essentially wasted as they must dedicate themselves to electing a president and delivering a speech in the throne. .
The Commons are scheduled to remain seated just four weeks before the break for the Christmas season on December 17, and MPs will not return until January 31.
If liberals intend to keep their promises for the first 100 days, and insist they do, that means a packed legislative agenda for the few weeks the House will be in session before the new year.
“We have a very aggressive agenda to address in the next few weeks and that is what we are focused on,” House Leader Mark Holland said last week after the first Liberal caucus meeting after the elections.
In addition to the eight bills promised by the platform to be presented before February 3, the government is also preparing legislation to address two issues related to the pandemic that were not specifically mentioned on the platform.
The first would implement last month’s announcement on more specific emergency aid benefits for people and sectors most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The clock is already ticking on the liberals’ promise to introduce a large number of bills in the first 100 days. #CDNPoli
Holland indicated that the highest priority will be given to passing that bill as quickly as possible.
Holland also noted that priority will be given to passing a bill to impose criminal penalties on anyone who blocks access to vaccine clinics, hospitals, testing centers and abortion clinics. It would also target anyone who intimidates or harasses healthcare workers, keeping a promise made by Trudeau as protests against vaccines escalated during the campaign.
“Right now we want to make sure … that we don’t see what happened before when healthcare professionals who are trying to be on the front lines of this battle are dealing with protesters and being threatened by it,” Holland said.
Privately, government officials are hopeful that opposition parties will recognize the urgency of swiftly passing those two bills, as they have done in the past with other laws related to the pandemic.
Because they only occupy a minority of seats in the Commons, Liberals will need the support of at least one opposition party to pass laws or limit debate and force a vote on a bill.
In a minority Chamber, an opposition party can drag out the debate for weeks simply by placing more speakers and running out of time. It can also hamper the government’s agenda by deploying procedural delaying tactics.
Conservatives routinely did both in the last Parliament, which was also a liberal minority, on issues unrelated to the pandemic.
Only towards the end of last spring’s session did the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois support the Liberals in imposing the shutdown to cut the debate and force a vote on a couple of priority bills to ban conversion therapy and regulate network giants, but that came too late to get approval. bills passed the Senate before summer break and both died after Trudeau called an election in August.
However, the government has signaled that this time it hopes that relatively quick progress can be made on at least two of the bills that the platform promised to present within 100 days.
One would provide 10 days of paid sick leave for federally regulated workers, a move sparked by the pandemic.
The other would be a reintroduced bill to ban the traumatizing practice of forcing a person to undergo “conversion therapy” aimed at altering their sexual orientation or gender identity. Although the Conservatives opened the debate on the ban last time and more than half of them voted against it, all other parties strongly support it.
Other promised bills could take more than 100 days to overcome all legislative hurdles. They include legislation to:
– Regulate foreign web giants to ensure they contribute to the creation and promotion of Canadian music and stories. A bill on this issue introduced in the last session proved controversial, with critics saying it would end up regulating what people post on social media.
– Require digital platforms to share the revenue from the news content they publish with the Canadian media that create it.
– Strengthen the Law on Official Languages and introduce a Law for the substantive equality of French and English.
– Combat hate online, including hate speech, terrorist content, incitement to violence, child sexual abuse and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. Among other things, that would include holding social media platforms accountable for the content they host.
– Reform the criminal justice system to address the disproportionate incarceration of black and indigenous people. That includes the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for less serious crimes and greater use of conditional sentences, such as house arrest, counseling or treatment, for people who do not pose a threat to public safety.
– Safeguard Canada’s critical infrastructure, including 5G networks, to preserve the integrity and security of national telecommunications systems.
The platform also commits the government to a number of other non-legislative tasks within 100 days, including appointing a new federal housing advocate, holding a summit on restarting cultural industries, meeting with the provinces, and territories to develop a national plan to legislate paid sick leave. nationwide and the launch of a procurement process for the development of a high-frequency rail corridor between Toronto and Quebec City.
This Canadian Press report was first published on November 15, 2021.
Reference-www.nationalobserver.com