Peace in Parliament didn’t last.
The traditional distance between the government and opposition seats in the House of Commons is two swords’ length — roughly four metres — which just happens to be perfect for a Parliament sitting while the nation is in the midst of a pandemic.
Political rivals, in other words, have been social distancing for centuries.
It may also be comforting to know that while many Canadians’ lives are in a state of suspended animation because of COVID-19, politics in Ottawa is alive and kicking, swords and all.
How exactly the government started fighting with the opposition over emergency legislation is not entirely clear.
For a while last week, when Justin Trudeau’s cabinet unveiled its massive relief package for COVID-19, it seemed that the pandemic had prompted a “peace in our time” moment in federal politics.
Phone calls back and forth between the government and opposition went smoothly on turning the relief package into the law of the land. Liberal House Leader Pablo Rodriguez got his counterparts on the phone and arrangements were made to convene a special, socially distant style of sitting in the Commons, with just a few dozen MPs present.
Conservative House Leader Candice Bergen reportedly made one request: “No surprises.”
On Sunday night, however, Conservatives were indeed surprised when they were sent a draft of the legislation, which public servants and Trudeau’s team had been furiously crafting for about a week.
Several parts of the bill, according to Conservatives, gave the government far too much leeway to detour around Parliament — most specifically, and now notoriously, “Part 2,” which would have allowed Trudeau to authorize emergency spending without Parliament’s approval until the end of 2021, more than a year and a half from now.
According to officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, what the Conservatives saw as a deal-breaker was just an opening position for bargaining — a way-out-there forecast of how long COVID-19 could be rippling through the Canadian economy. It was a date picked by officials, the PMO said, because of phrases with which we are now familiar: “an abundance of caution” and “prudent planning.”
Way out there is right, though. Apart from the democratic implications of giving the government this extended authority, there was high potential for this to be seen as a worst-case scenario — terms in which a lot of Canadians are thinking these days. Is this new normal a condition that will be with us until 2022? The mere idea could tip off panic and despair.
Not so, the PMO insists. “No one should read 21 months as an expected timeline for COVID-19,” one senior official said on Tuesday.
Still, Conservatives wondered how this extraordinary proposal had cleared cabinet and landed in the form of a bill; somebody in the highest offices of the land must have been looking for this kind of power.
Again, the PMO denies this, quite vehemently. “B.S.,” the official said when told of the Conservatives’ allegations. It really was a draft of legislation, according to the Liberals, and opposition parties aren’t normally sent bills in advance. As for the idea that the cabinet had approved the extraordinary powers, “they don’t all sit around with specs and magnifying glasses” going through draft legislation, the official said.
By Monday night, the offending Part 2 was gone. Trudeau made it official in a concise little tweet on Tuesday morning. But the political combatants don’t even agree on how it happened.
According to the Conservatives, the Liberals only relented after the draft was leaked — by Conservatives — to the media, “to apply some strategic pressure,” one senior aide said.
According to the Liberals, this was never a hill to die on. Part 2 was excised after a few phone calls on Monday night and a firm decision by Trudeau himself to defer to Parliament’s authority.
“I want to make it very clear: I believe in our democratic institutions,” Trudeau told reporters at his daily news conference on Tuesday morning outside Rideau Cottage.
It’s a good thing he does, because the institution of Parliament couldn't manage the quick passage of emergency legislation that was planned for Tuesday. The Monday phone negotiations turned into a marathon session of haggling in person in West Block on Tuesday afternoon. From all reports, the participants were sitting in the mandated twometre-plus distance from each other as the talks went on. A big container of hand sanitizer sat in the empty Commons, near the Speaker, awaiting the session to start.
Swords were banned in legislatures eons ago, but the symbolic distance remains. This week, during these extraordinary times for Canada, so does the political distance remain between Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and the opposition. Nice to know, maybe, that some things are pandemic proof.