BREAKING: Mark Carney Planning To Prorogue Parliament To Secure Committee Majority

If Mark Carney is outside of Canada and

his bills end up coming to any of the

votes,

they could potentially lose those votes.

And this is the problem with a fragile

majority.

How could he lose those votes despite

them having 172 seats, which is the

majority, even with the speaker voting

with them like this?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have breaking

news. With the three bi-elections

potentially giving Mark Carney a fragile

majority, sources are now saying he's

considering progation of parliament if

he gets it. Meanwhile, Liberal ministers

insist there are no such plans to

provoke Parliament. So why would Mark

Carney hit reset on Parliament and for

how long?

Let's take a look.

from the National Post. Government says

it will not progue Parliament if

Liberals sweep April 13th bi-elections.

Move would give the party control of the

House of Commons committees and allow it

to push through legislation more easily.

Liberal government is considering

proging parliament to gain control of

House of Commons committees and more

easily push through legislation if the

party wins all of the three bi-elections

taking place on April 13th, two Liberal

Party sources say. Isn't that kind of

funny? The headline being contradicted

by the first paragraph.

Prime Minister Mark Carney's government

has been navigating a difficult minority

parliament that has limited its ability

to control committee agendas and passage

of legislation. That's the entire point

of minority parliaments. Membership on

committees is decided by the number of

seats each party has in the Commons

after a general election. In a minority

parliament, the Liberals can be outvoted

on committees by a combination of

conservatives and blockaba and

legislation can be delayed for months as

happened with the government's budget

implementation bill. The prime

minister's deputy chief of staff, Braden

Kaye, said there were no plans to

provoke parliament after the

bi-elections, saying Mr. Carney is quote

unquote laser focused on fast action

across all of government to build our

economy strong. In a statement Tuesday,

government house leader Steve McKinnon

also said Ottawa won't parogue as quote,

"We work towards a spring economic

update that builds a stronger, more

independent, more competitive Canadian

economy." End quote. A Liberal sweep of

all three writings would bring the party

seat count to 173 in the 343 seat House

of Commons, which is one more than a

bare majority. This would prevent the

opposition from defeating the government

in a confidence vote. But even with a

majority, in order to restructure

commons committees, the government would

still likely need to turn to progation,

a procedure that ends the current

session of parliament and releases MPs

from their parliamentary duties,

including committee appointments. If the

Liberals win the three bi-elections, the

sources said one option being looked at

carefully is for the government to have

a short progation, come back with a new

throne speech and revamp the committee

system. Another option is to progue in

September. The sources said the Globe

and Mail is not naming the two sources

because they were not authorized to

discuss the matter publicly. A third

source said the government could also

try to change the standing orders on

committee membership without progation.

But the government official said the

conservatives and block would likely put

up a political fight and mount a

filibuster to keep the current committee

standings that were set after the

general election last April. The Globe

is not naming the official who did not

want to publicly discuss the

government's parliamentary strategy

before the April 13th vote.

Reordering the party standings on

committees without proruggation would

require a motion approved by the House

of Commons. In order to win such a vote,

the Liberals would need 173 votes, one

more than a bare majority. If the

Liberals only have 172 seats following

the bi-elections, such a motion could

result in a tie, in which case the

speaker by tradition is required to vote

in favor of the status quo and it would

not be approved. So what does that mean?

Okay,

so as we all know, progregation is a

tool that prime ministers sometimes use

that traditionally resets the agenda in

parliament.

And this sometimes takes place after

major global events or the government

has actually completed most of its

mandate um as a result of the last

general election. So they may provoke

parliament and then go to a throne

speech where they set a new agenda uh

for government to actually act on. Now

that's not the case in this case. So

what is really going on here? Well,

there's a couple of different ways that

Mark Carney has to actually solve a

problem. And the problem is if he gets

this majority,

his problem is committee. See, after the

general election when Mark Carney had

not a majority government, the committee

numbers were determined based on the

representation in the House. So the

Conservatives had the vast majority of

the opposition seats followed by the

block and the NDP didn't have party

status and neither does the Green. So

you ended up with the Conservatives

having um a bunch of people on

committee. You had the block with one

and then that would outnumber the uh the

liberals that are on those committee

meetings. So this gives the opposition a

lot of power in committees to hold the

government to account in a minority

government.

But

the minute you get to a majority,

if those committees were rearranged,

then the balance flips over to the

Liberals because they have a majority

government. So they would effectively

have a majority in just about every

committee.

Now,

what does this have to do with this

discussion? Well,

one school of thought is that in order

to actually reset these committees to

gain that majority in committees to

reflect the majority that's in the

House, that the Liberals should just pro

out Parliament. That would dissolve all

the committees, end all investigations,

but it would also end all the bills

um no matter whether they're in the

Senate or the House. But

with a majority government, what the

Liberals would just have to do in order

to bring back those bills is they could

introduce a motion into the House to

just revive all the bills in the in the

order that they were. And that would

like that would be approved because they

have a majority and then all of the

bills would come back to where they were

in the House.

Not necessarily in the Senate. In the

Senate, that's different. That motion in

the House doesn't apply to bills that

are actively navigating the Senate. So,

you know, C9 is going to be discussed

right now in the uh in the Senate. And

if they per rogue, then C9 would die in

the Senate. So, what the Liberals would

have to do is essentially bring it back

to the point where it was in the House

of Commons and then resend it to the

Senate and then it would start all over.

The Senate doesn't have to adopt what

the government wants them to adopt in

terms of resuscitating all these bills

and progression.

So that's one thing. Now, why would why

would they bother doing that? Well, it's

cleaner. It's cleaner than the other

way. So, they don't actually have to per