If the Conservatives were hoping for procedural tactics to try and delay the budget speech on Tuesday, well, they were outplayed by the government, who used their ability to control the timing of those Estimates votes to Wednesday instead of Monday. If you recall, the plan was for the Conservatives to force line-by-line votes on the Supplementary Estimates, so that they could delay the budget speech, which I will also remind you is a tactically stupid move, and doesn’t prove any point. And yet here we are. This having been said, I fully expect them to try some kind of dilatory tactics including a privilege motion of some variety on Tuesday in order to move the budget speech, because they’ve tried it before in the past, but once again, we’re a long way from the times that people who were good at this kind of thing were in charge.
Well, the procedural flaw in CPC's plan for voting on the Estimates has now been revealed. The Gov is simply going to move the last Opposition day from Monday to Wednesday, giving the Opp a short day for debate as well.
— B. Thomas Hall (@ThomasHall17) March 17, 2019
The last Opposition day is the last allotted day of the Supply Period. Was supposed to be Monday. Rules changed a few yrs back to allow for an Opposition motion on the last allotted day. Previously it was only the Estimates. Opposed Votes require divisions.
— B. Thomas Hall (@ThomasHall17) March 17, 2019
Meanwhile, you can expect the next two days to be replete with bleating admonishing that the Liberals are going to try to use a “shock and awe” budget to drown out the Double-Hyphen Affair, as though the past five weeks of breathless reporting will evaporate in a single night. Come on.
Good reads:
- Ambassador McNaughton is still confident that the steel and aluminium tariffs will be lifted in weeks.
- In advance of the budget, some media outlets are wondering whatever happened to the promised arm’s length panel to decide on the hiring tax credit eligibility.
- Government analysts are now predicting that more than the anticipated 20,000 Canadians will use the optional 18-month parental leave benefits.
- The Royal Canadian Navy has decided against the Conservative plan to name their planned supply ships for War of 1812 battles, citing that they sound like “wineries.”
- The consultations wrapped months ago, and there has been no sign of the promised national data strategy to deal with things like privacy in Big Data.
- The Commons trade committee has voted to hear from the agriculture and trade ministers the week of April 1ston the canola issue with China.
- Here’s a look at the state of the hearings on Bill C-69.
- Jagmeet Singh was sworn in as an MP on Sunday afternoon, meaning he can take his seat in the House of Commons today before QP.
- More documents are showing collusion between Jason Kenney’s campaign and another during the UCP leadership; Kenney’s camp is now saying it’s all normal.
- Kevin Carmichael makes the interesting comparison between Trudeau’s infrastructure plan and Obamacare, and how both fell apart in the execution.
- James Bagnall writes about the great Ottawa tradition of spending millions of dollars to fix broken technology projects, like Phoenix and Shared Services Canada.
Odds and ends:
https://twitter.com/DonRusnakMP/status/1107342072510451712
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