Can the Liberals resist omnibus bills? – Adam Dodek

Will be an early test of the Liberal government and more independent Senators (and the Senate):

Until recently, budget bills were a rather drab affair. Parliamentary expert Ned Franks found that between 1995 and 2000, the average length of budget bills was 12 pages. In 1994, Reform MP Stephen Harper complained about the omnibus nature of the Liberal government’s budget implementation bill, which was 24 pages.

Omnibudget bills began under the minority government of Prime Minister Paul Martin with bills of more than 100 pages and grew to mammoth proportions under Prime Minister Harper: The most egregious topped 800 pages. The Harper government went beyond the accepted understanding of an omnibus bill by tacking on subjects to its budget bills that had nothing to do with the budgets (such as changing the Supreme Court Act in the face of the challenge to the government’s nomination of Marc Nadon in 2013).

These bills are an affront to parliamentary democracy because they prevent the House and the Senate from doing their job to adequately scrutinize legislation. The bills arguably infringe on the privileges of individual MPs, despite rulings to the contrary by successive speakers of the House. Instead of standing up for the rights and responsibilities of individual parliamentarians, successive speakers have allowed omnibus bills to persist and grow to offensive proportions.

Fortunately, unlike many other desperately needed democratic reforms, fixing omnibus bills is relatively easy: It doesn’t require a constitutional amendment, a referendum or even a law. All that is required is for the government to take the initiative and change the House of Commons rules of procedure to restrict the use of omnibus bills.

That’s the easy answer. But there is also a brave solution and a bold one as well.

The brave solution would be for a speaker to stand up for the rights of parliamentarians and draw a line in the sand at omnibudget bills and rule them out of order. The bold solution would be for a newly independent Senate to assert its independence and refuse to consider omnibus House legislation that cannot be properly scrutinized. I doubt that is the sort of independence the Trudeau government desires from a reformed Senate. However, it may be reason enough to spur the government into acting, sooner rather than later.