While the Legault government announces ambitious reform projects in the home stretch of the health emergency, its federal counterpart, Justin Trudeau, sees an opportunity to drag its feet. The House of Commons will not sit until November 22, eight weeks after the unnecessary September 20 election.
We see here a digest of the duplicity of the liberals. To justify the holding of a hasty election, Mr. Trudeau had peddled the false idea that Parliament had become dysfunctional, when he could always count on the debonair support of the New Democratic Party and on that, more circumspect, of the Bloc Québécois to advance its legislative program.
At the end of a poll that reproduced almost identically the composition of the previous Parliament, naive voters might have believed that Mr. Trudeau would rush to restart work in the House of Commons, so as not to fall behind. deliver its ambitious recovery projects.
This eight week interval is incomprehensible. When Mr. Trudeau delivers his Speech from the Throne, there will be one month left before the holiday break. The Liberals may well promise anything in the world within the first 100 days of their term in office, at the rate things are going, 2022 will be off to a good start before legislative reforms materialize.
The maneuver smells of warmth. At the end of his minority election in October 2019, Mr. Trudeau waited until December 5 to convene Parliament, which had given a big total of eight days of work. And this is how the legislative ambitions of the Liberals wither. In laziness and appetite for governance by decree, certainly not because of the obstruction of opposition parties.
On average, the Commons sit about 120 days a year when there is no election in sight. Parliament has sat for 75 days in 2019, 86 days in 2020 and 76 so far in 2021. The tribulations of a minority government and the pandemic have certainly contributed to the reduction in the number of days of activity, but more time the more we see the pandemic being a pretext the Trudeau government is using to evade rigorous scrutiny of its public policies and actions, and to lessen the inconvenience of its minority government status.
This new shortened session represents one more snub from Justin Trudeau to democratic institutions.