Opposition vows to fight budget bill

MPS ready to force confidence votes to stop ‘ reckless changes’ in legislation

OTTAWA — Opposition parties are warning that they’re prepared to force hundreds of confidence votes — taking dozens of hours — on amendments to the Conservatives’ sweeping budget bill that will demand the Tories be on their toes if they’re to avoid being toppled.

The NDP, Liberals and Green party leader Elizabeth May are teaming up to delay passage of Bill C- 38 and highlight to Canadians what they say are undemocratic tactics by the government to stuff so many “reckless changes” into one piece of legislation that will overhaul environmental protection and the country’s social programs.

NDP House leader Nathan Cullen said Tuesday the Conservatives’ decision to bury so many changes into one 425- page budget bill — instead of introducing them through separate pieces of legislation — is forcing hundreds of proposed amendments that should be considered confidence votes for a Harper government with a slim majority in the House of Commons.

The government will need most of its 165 members in the 308- seat Commons to be in the House for all the votes — at potentially all hours of the night — otherwise it risks falling at any moment, he said.

“The way the government constructed this bill is fraught with peril because on each of these potentially hundreds of votes, they have to win each one ... they put themselves at risk,” Cullen told reporters on Parliament Hill.

“The government has made their bed and they’re about to lay in it,” he added. “This is the rule of unintended consequences coming.”

While the government views the opposition’s tactics as “partisan, procedural games,” the proposed reforms in the budget implementation bill would rewrite about 70 different laws and have profound impacts on Canadians of all ages for decades to come.

Bill C- 38 proposes major reforms to Canadian environmental and fisheries laws, natural resource project approvals, employment insurance benefits, Old Age Security eligibility and food safety, among the hundreds of measures included in the legislation.

To combat the looming changes, opposition parties have been introducing dozens of substantial amendments at the Tory- dominated House of Commons finance committee, which is reviewing the bill, and a subcommittee that already examined the proposed reforms to environmental protection and resource development.

The finance committee is expected to send the legislation back to the Commons as early as today, where the Green party leader [ who doesn’t have a seat on the committee] plans on introducing possibly 200 major amendments of her own. The bill would then go to third and final reading in the next week or two before the House rises for the summer.

“What is being proposed at the moment [ in the budget bill] is an absolute outrage,” May said in an interview. “The pressure is building against it.”