Each week, our parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa Marie Vastel analyzes a federal political issue to help you better understand it.
Christmas trees were installed to decorate the parliament. Members are preparing to send out their greeting cards. The time for session assessments is approaching, but the Trudeau government will post a very thin one this fall. Because re-elected for barely a year, the Liberals have tabled only a handful of bills in the Commons. An exceptionally small number, compared to previous mandates. And which leads to wondering if the Trudeau team is too busy with the multiple crises to be managed outside of Parliament.
In eight weeks of parliamentary work since September, the Liberals have introduced only four bills. “We focused on the cost of living. Our legislative agenda has therefore been very targeted to tackle it,” explains the leader of the government in the Commons, Mark Holland.
Two of these bills were passed, providing a dental benefit for parents of children under 12, rent assistance for the less well-off, and temporarily doubling the GST credit. Another implements the measures announced in the economic update at the beginning of the month. The last proposes to simplify supply chains, by modernizing the rules of ports and railways.
Since inflation and the cost of living are the first concern of Canadians and the priority of the government, it would have been illogical to introduce other legislative proposals and thus clutter the parliamentary process, it is argued to the government.
However, for the same period following the previous Trudeau government elections, the latter had tabled three times as many bills in three months. In 2016, a year after its 2015 victory, the Liberal team presented 11 bills. In 2020, following the 2019 ballot, it was 13 bills. The average was the same under Stephen Harper’s government: 8 bills a year after the 2006 victory, and 12 a year after that of 2008. It was only during the third and last mandate of the Conservatives that the Harper’s team had also tabled only four bills, 12 months after his re-election.
The rest of the world and Canada
It must be said that the government of Justin Trudeau never stops dealing with crises. The war in Ukraine has captured much of his attention and that of his ministers for nine months, between international meetings, the imposition of sanctions on Russian entities and the sending of humanitarian and military aid.
Added to this was the China file, with the finalization of the long-awaited Indo-Pacific strategy to deal with a power now described as “disruptive” (and unveiled by no less than six ministers) as well as the allegations of foreign interference. during elections or with the diaspora.
Closer to home, the arrival of Danielle Smith at the head of Alberta is causing headaches in Ottawa. The Premier officially tabled, at the opening of the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, her “Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act”. Alberta Conservatives are already opposed to the federal assault weapons buyback program as well as the gun control bill. Neighboring Saskatchewan adopted the same confrontational tone, with its “Saskatchewan First Act”.
All issues that monopolize the questions posed to the government in the Commons or by the media.
And so many files on fire for an office of Prime Minister Trudeau recognized by some, in Ottawa, as having difficulty managing several crises at the same time. Decision-making or prioritization of issues is still sometimes a problem, observes a federal source.
Justify the “immobility”
The Liberals point out that in addition to the four bills presented this fall, they also have several under study since the spring. Four others were tabled at the very end of the session, in June. Then C-13 on official languages, C-21 on firearms control and C-11 on broadcasting also took time to get through parliamentary study. Only six bills were passed in total this fall.
Sources also report a certain fatigue within the government apparatus, both among employees and in the public service, after two and a half years of governing in the midst of a pandemic.
However, these explanations do not convince the opposition.
“It’s an abnormally small number and an approach in Parliament that is abnormally unambitious,” observes New Democratic Party National Director Anne McGrath, who has worked in other federal governments and worked in the federal government herself. former NDP government in Alberta. That of Justin Trudeau can count on a team of 38 ministers and the entire machinery of government, she retorts to the justifications of the Liberals.
The latter have also – and above all, perhaps – seen the arrival of the new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in September, who has made the rise in the cost of living his main battle horse and who hits on this nail daily.
Mark Holland denies that his government legislates with Mr Poilievre in mind. But Conservative Luc Berthold believes that this explains the Trudeau government’s thin legislative menu.
Bloc member Alain Therrien sees, like Mr. Berthold, in this “extremely light” menu the proof of a “wear and tear of power” and of a government “out of ideas”.
If Justin Trudeau wants to stay in the saddle, as he says, to run for a fourth term in a year or two, he may have to give the impression that he and his team still have a few social projects to offer Canadians. And not just a handful of bills every three months.