Parliament’s pandemic session has fallen apart
As MPs head on break, parties reflect on how civility turned to mistrust
The pandemic Parliament ended its extraordinary spring sitting Thursday amid interparty frustrations, distrust and rancour.
At first, way back in mid-March, when the rapid spread of coronavirus shut down ordinary sittings, it seemed as if Ottawa politicians would pull off a feat of collaboration.
There was historic innovation all around.
Sludgy government systems shifted into high gear, adapted, became nimble. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made nice with the premiers. The opposition got advance looks at bills. Billions of dollars in aid flowed out the door after swift legislative approvals.
Eventually, Parliament returned to sit as a “hybrid” legislative assembly, with up to 50 MPs appearing in-person and others attending “virtually” via video conferencing. Its scope and powers were mostly limited to pressing questions around COVID-19.
It was a near complete and rapid shift from business as normal.
But it wasn’t matched by a historic shift in tone.
Key top officials in the main parties agreed in conversations with the Star that there was a real sense of collaboration at the outset.
Senior Liberal officials, speaking on background because they were not authorized to discuss the interparty relations publicly, insisted the Trudeau government reached out to other party leaders and took a constructive approach. One said Trudeau made almost 20 calls to the other party leaders at key moments since March13, and that while they haven’t always agreed, the calls were professional, cordial and constructive.
But the three other official parties in the Commons (the Greens’ three MPs don’t have official party status, but Trudeau had spoken to Elizabeth May as well) characterize any outreach by Trudeau as merely a “heads-up” on legislation.
They say Trudeau did not put the same effort into consulting them, developing new relationships, or building trust with the other political leaders in a minority Parliament — at a time of crisis — that he put into establishing a regular working relationship with the 13 provincial and territorial leaders, for example.
“Absolutely none,” said Conservative House Leader Candice Bergen in an interview. The calls, said Bergen, “were just to tick off the box.”
Bergen said the first decision by everyone to shut down Parliament “was made in good faith,” but that the Liberals broke the trust with a “power grab” when they introduced emergency legislation that would have given them unprecedented power to tax and spend without seeking prior parliamentary approval until December 2021.
They were forced to drop the clause. Liberal officials told the Star it was a “mistake” that public servants had inserted in a draft bill, based on a guess about how long the pandemic could last. The Conservatives don’t buy that.
“And that really set a very negative tone for the rest of the following three months,’ said Bergen.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s chief of staff, Jennifer Howard, is less critical, although she says there has been much less leader-to-leader engagement than she expected at the outset.
Overall, Howard said, the interparty dynamics have been “constructive” until recently, but she said Singh is “focused on getting concrete results” for people and at time “frustrated” by how long that seems to take.
Alain Therrien, the BQ House leader who clashed with Singh this week, said in a brief interview Thursday — as aides tried to drag him away — that MPs were “pretty traumatized” in the beginning of the pandemic crisis, yet there was a sense of “real solidarity.”
But he said that things went downhill “with the closure of Parliament as we know it.”
The Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois chafed under the constraints on debate and demanded a return to normal routines, with committees and MPs having their usual powers to compel witnesses and evidence on the whole range of government business.
And the NDP put the government on its heels by demanding more action on paid sick leave, support for disabled Canadians and an end to proposed criminal penalties for Canadians who claim emergency benefits they’re not entitled to.
By the final week, MPs were back to the kind of bare-knuckled disputes that characterize the usual June rush when legislation is jammed through ahead of summer.
All MPs head to their ridings for a break for now. The hybrid Parliament will return for four more days in the summer — two in July and two in August — and the Conservatives will have a new leader by the last scheduled sitting on Aug. 26.
Bergen says, however, the Conservative approach to holding the government to account won’t change.
“I think Parliament is a place where the most powerful people in the country should feel the most uncomfortable. That’s what we tried to do,” she said.
“We tried to hold the government to account, tried to do everything we can to have Parliament return but Trudeau used his power and the favour that he has with many in the media … to shut down Parliament and shut down democracy. At some point, he’ll be held accountable for that.”