The House of Commons rose yesterday, earlier than expected after news that Conservative MP Mark Warawa died of cancer. Business was truncated, all remaining bills passed swiftly, and a few tributes were made to Warawa before adjourning the House, ostensibly until September, but the writs would be drawn up for the election before then. There is a chance that Parliament will be called back in the summer to deal with the New NAFTA implementation bill, which was not passed, but apparently they’re waiting on the Americans before we go further.

Over on the Senate, side, a number of bills passed through swiftly, including the reforms to the Access to Information legislation, but the ones that caught the most attention were Bills C-48 and C-69, being the west coast oil tanker ban and the environmental assessment legislation. Immediately after those were passed, Alberta premier Jason Kenney thundered over Twitter about how he was going to challenge them in court – which you can expect the courts to tell him to go pound sand, just as they will with his challenge to the federal carbon price that will be imposed on his province come January. The Senate won’t be passing a number of private members’ bills, including some prominent ones like Rona Ambrose’s bill, but it was a bad bill anyway and deserved to die on the Order Paper. (The Liberals also promised to revive the bill in the next parliament, which…isn’t great, frankly, because it’s either unconstitutional in its original form, or largely symbolic in its amended form).

This means that all that’s left is a royal assent ceremony, which will happen this afternoon, and it’ll be the first time that they’re going to attempt a ceremony with the two chambers in separate buildings. It’s been suggested previously that the Usher of the Black Rod will take a limousine to West Block to knock on the Commons’ door to deliver the message that Her Excellency requests their presence in the Senate, at which point the Speaker and a token few MPs will head over – possibly in limos or little parliamentary busses – to the Senate for the ceremony. We’ll see how it all unfolds.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau met with Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi to talk about ratifying the New NAFTA, as well as the Canadians detained in China. (More on the mood here).
• Ahmed Hussen says he would like Canada to resettle more refugees, and process some of them through the economic immigration stream.
• Elections Canada scrapped their plans to use social media “influencers” to encourage youth to vote. They also released their list, to Conservative howls.
• Here’s a look at the emerging prospect of “deepfake” videos being used in the coming election.
• There are allegations of a human smuggling operation helping hundreds of Chinese nationals across the Canadian border in BC to claim asylum here.
• The Federal Court sided with the RCMP in their refusal to turn over two files to the MMIW Inquiry, citing that they could interfere with ongoing investigations.
• Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Richard Wagner says governments need to better invest in the legal system (including legal aid) to improve access to justice.
• It looks like the Senate study of the Mark Norman issue won’t go ahead because Senator Harder won’t go for it – but Normans’ lawyer wasn’t keen on it either.
• Here’s a recap of the race and politics event earlier this week.
• Ever the class act, Jason Kenney passed around earplugs during a debate on a bill in the Alberta legislature that broke public sector union contracts.
• Paul Wells gives a particularly acid take on Scheer’s climate “plan” but also notes that its true audience is for people who really don’t care.
• My column digs into the behind-the-scenes drama that saw the deaths of those private members bills in the Senate (aside from them being bad bills).

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