‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss’

Once again, the Trudeau Liberal government is in hot water for violating an election pledge. This time, it’s all about using omnibus bills to push through large amounts of legislation expediently, at the expense of meaningful parliamentary debate and input from opposition parties.

Specifically this revolves around a 300-plus page document designed to get the budget, and all related matters, into law before Parliament breaks for the summer.

Political hypocrisy is the charge levelled at the government, because Justin Trudeau campaigned on the opposite from this. And when Liberals were in opposition they howled at the moon when the Harper Conservatives did much the same thing. Trudeau famously said before being elected: “We will not resort to legislative tricks to avoid scrutiny.” And now, here we are.

But hang on. The comparison isn’t exactly apples to apples. The Liberals defend this particular omnibus bill by saying everything in it flows directly from the budget. They’re not trying to slide through unrelated legislation hidden inside the budget implementation content. That’s largely true. What made the Harper Conservatives fondness for omnibus legislation particularly odious was that unrelated pieces of legislation would be packaged together and driven through Parliament. Then, if opposition critics slowed progress of a piece of legislation they had trouble with, they could handily be accused of holding up the entire legislative agenda, when what they really wanted was to do their opposition jobs on a specific part of the omnibus.

In fairness, let’s acknowledge the Liberals aren’t guilty of that. And their stated intent to get the budget implementation legislation on the books by summer makes sense.

But in another way, the criticism is justified. There’s no denying the optics of this reality, when compared with what Trudeau promised, are terrible. He said he’d usher in electoral reform. Not so much. He promised to “make the Parliamentary Budget Officer truly independent.” A part of the omnibus bill wants new controls on the PBO, going in exactly the opposite direction. Trudeau promised more transparency and accountability, in part by not using tools like omnibus bills. That was then, this is now, apparently.

So while the details of the criticism are a little off base and hyperbolic, the substance is still there and that should bother Canadians, and the Liberal brain trust. The party that promised to be different, and was elected because of that promise, is looking more and more like same old, same old government. It brings to mind The Who’s classic rock anthem, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” You know the line: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” You can safely bet that is not the legacy that Justin Trudeau wants to leave behind.