The bill to enact the Trans Pacific Partnership has passed the House of Commons and arrived in the Senate, and the race is on for its swift passage, as there is a desire for Canada to be among one of the first six countries to ratify the deal (currently three others have ratified). In the Commons, the NDP were the prime opponents to the deal, but they’re not a force in the Senate. The Conservatives in the Senate are just as keen on its swift passage as their Commons counterparts were – and they tried on more than one occasion to pass the bill at all stages without debate (because hey, who needs to do the job of scrutinising bills and holding government to account?)

While we can expect a bit more scrutiny in the Senate, I have to wonder where any delays will come from. When it comes to the Independents, one of their own are sponsoring the bill, so he will likely lead a push within that caucus in the way of organising briefings and trying to muster votes, so it would largely be an issue of whether any of them want some particular extended study on issues in the bill. The Senate Liberals tend to be free-traders, but they will want to insist on some scrutiny, as is their forte – they can often be counted on to do some of the heavy lifting that MPs are unwilling to do. So while I don’t expect them to hold up the bill, I would expect them to do their due diligence, which means it won’t sail right through, though I wouldn’t expect it to take long.

So where would I expect any delays to happen with this bill? With the Leader of the Government in the Senate’s office, given his reluctance to do any negotiation of timelines for bill passage. If there’s to be any delays, I personally would expect them to come from bottlenecks of other bills that are languishing because they can’t manage to get them passed at a reasonable pace because nobody wants to do the actual negotiation of timelines. Delays will come from incompetence, rather than malice. We’ll have to see how severe it will be, but that seems to be the state of things in the Senate these days.

Good reads:

• The government tabled a bill designed to combat animal abuse and to close bestiality loopholes following a Supreme Court of Canada decision two years ago.
• The government’s asbestos-banning regulations were unveiled yesterday, and contain some time-limited exceptions that have critics grousing.
• At a visit to Queen’s Park, Dominic LeBlanc took some jabs at Doug Ford by accusing him of trying to run for federal politics just months into his time as premier.
• CSE warns that cyber threats to the next election are increasing, while the government opts not to put parties under privacy regimes that could reduce hacks.
• Here’s a great explainer on why Western Canadian oil is selling at such a huge discount right now (and it’s not just pipelines).
• Here’s a look at the current figures for irregular border crossings.
• The father of “Jihadi Jack” (a Canadian citizen) perhaps credulously says his son is innocent and accuses Andrew Scheer of perpetuating lies.
• EDC is warning that the forces of both populism and protectionism are hampering economic growth in Canada.
• The regulations for legal cannabis weigh in at 217 pages, and stipulate that people in charge of companies need security clearances with deep background checks.
• Civil service executives are getting testy over the fact that their raises (retroactive to 2014) may not be processed until next year because of Phoenix backlogs.
• New Senator Brian Francis once served on the advisory board that picked Senator Griffin, and says he cleared his application with the federal Ethics Commissioner.
• The Liberals still won’t say whether they’ll run a candidate against Jagmeet Singh when they call the Burnaby South byelection (though I’m sure they will).
• After indicating otherwise just days before, Andrew Scheer is no longer ruling out undoing cannabis legalisation if he forms a future government.
• In New Brunswick, every MLA who is not already in Cabinet has withdrawn their name for consideration as Speaker, so that’s going well.
• Brian Mulroney has accepted a board position for a US-based cannabis company, and laughs off any notion that he’s hypocritical about it given past positions on pot.
• Susan Delacourt muses about the notion of politicians blocking people on Twitter, and how the pushback stems from a “customer is always right” mentality.

Odds and ends:

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre announced the birth of a daughter yesterday.

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