Josh Dehaas: Carney asks Parliament to give him the power of a king

Back on Jan. 6 of this year, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau informed us that he would ask the Governor General to prorogue Parliament until March 24, so that the Liberal party could find a new leader. The governor general agreed, and MPs were sent packing.

We got a new prime minister on March 9, and Mark Carney was confirmed in an election on April 28. Yet Parliament didn’t resume until May 26. By the time Parliament returned — five months into the year — we were told there simply wasn’t time to do a budget. Instead, Parliament passed Bill C-5, which allows the Carney government to pick projects of “national interest” and exempt them from all but a short list of Parliament’s own laws. After just a few weeks, MPs went home for the summer.

We finally got the budget on Nov 4. After narrowly surviving a confidence vote on Nov. 18, the Liberals informed us that the budget bill will actually include yet another measure that would sideline Parliament’s functions, concentrating even more power in the prime minister and his cabinet. Section 12 of the Bill C-15 would allow the minister to exempt any individual, business or other organization from any existing law or regulation other than the Criminal Code, for up to six years, with few limits. This means Prime Minister Carney and his ministers could get to act like dictators, greenlighting exemptions to Parliament’s laws for their friends whenever convenient.
Parliamentarians may not want an election right now, but they could come to regret voting in favour of a bill that further sidelines their work. ---More...