Liberals threaten to limit debate to push agenda forward

OTTAWA— After abandoning their attempt to put the House of Commons under new rules, the Liberals are warning they’ll get their legislation passed the old way.

Liberal House leader Bardish Chagger said Monday the government will resort to “time allocation” to move its agenda forward, essentially limiting the amount of time the House of Commons can study and debate government legislation.

Chagger said the government will have to use the practice — which the Harper Conservatives were criticized for overusing — because oppo- sition parties rejected reform proposals meant to “modernize” the House of Commons operations.

“We made clear commitments in the campaign, Canadians expect us to deliver all those commitments,” Chagger told reporters when asked if her comments amounted to a “threat” to opposition parties. “When agreements cannot be reached . . . there’s limited tools and time allocation will be one of those limited tools. It is important that all members understand that if we cannot find agreement, we will have to use time allocation more often.”

The day-to-day operations of the House of Commons had ground to a halt in recent weeks over Chagger’s proposed rule changes.

The Liberals’ “discussion paper” suggested axing sparsely populated Friday sittings, removing the opposition’s power to filibuster, or delay, government legislation at committee, and creating an all-party committee to determine how long pieces of legislation should be debated.

Opposition parties accused the government of trying to unilaterally change the rules of the game without their consent. Sunday night, after a two-week hiatus from the House, Chagger abandoned some of the controversial proposals — but said the government will push the chang- es they campaigned on in 2015.

Those include creating a prime minister’s question period, where Trudeau will be responsible to take all questions from the opposition, reforming parliamentary committee rules and limiting the use of omnibus legislation. Conservative House leader Candice Bergen said the Liberals are resorting to the kind of practices they criticized the former Conservative government for, including limiting debate.

Bergen, who made a joint response with NDP House leader Murray Rankin, accused the Liberals of ramming through their desired changes in the face of opposition concerns.

“It’s pretty rich,” Bergen told reporters. “It’s making, again, fundamental changes to the way the House of Commons operates without making those changes they normally would be made, which is with consensus of all parties.”

Rankin called Chagger’s proposals a “power grab” by the Liberals over the House of Common’s operations.

“We have no idea how they think they can get away with this,” Rankin said. “The Parliament is for the people of Canada. It’s not to make the government’s work more efficient. It’s to hold the government to account.”