After the 2012 summer recess, the parliamentary session resumed where it left off, with omnibus Bills on everybody’s minds. In June 2012, Bill C-38, the omnibus 452-page long Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, had been adopted by the Canadian Parliament despite tremendous efforts by the opposition to delay and obstruct its adoption. Motions and amendments at report stage were so numerous,that it took 22 hours for the House of Commons to dispose of them all, as the opposition had asked for a standing vote for each one. However, Bill C-38 was only the first part of 2012 Budget implementing legislation, and in the early fall 2012 Parliament Hill was speculating as to when the next omnibus budget implementation Bill would be introduced. While awaiting the introduction
of that omnibus, Mr Marc Garneau, MP, House Leader of the Liberal Party, moved a motion criticizing the use of omnibus Bills during an opposition day attributed to the Liberal Party. Mr Garneau’s motion referred with ironic approval to critical comments about omnibus Bills that the Rt Hon. Stephen Harper, MP, had made in 1994 when he was in opposition. Unsurprisingly, Mr Garneau’s motion was defeated on the same day, the government voting en masse against it. On 18 October 2012,
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the second 2012 Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-45, or the Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, was introduced in the House of Commons. It did not take long for the Leader of the Opposition, and leader of the New Democratic Party, Mr Thomas Mulcair, MP, to denounce the 430-page Bill as the “government’s mammoth Bill” or “monster Bill just in time for Halloween,” and the government’s contempt for the parliamentary institutions. Like its predecessor, Bill C-45 proposed important changes to statutory law amending numerous and diverse statutes, such as the Income Tax Act, Canada Shipping Act, 2001, Fisheries Act, Canada Pension Plan, Canada Labour Code, etc. Bill C-45 also included amendments to the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act that will, for example, postpone the age members are
interim Leader of the Liberal Party, proposed that the measures about MPs’ pensions be removed from the omnibus Bill in order to be adopted quickly by Parliament. Prime Minister Harper took the
Mr Thomas Mulcair
“suggestion under advisement.” The following day, the House of Commons unanimously ordered that the amendments respecting the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act be removed from Bill C-45, and deemed introduced as Bill C-46, the Pension Reform Act. Bill C-46 was deemed adopted all stages in the same sitting, and the Senate also proceeded quickly with its study of the Bill so that it received Royal Assent on November 1, 2012. Meanwhile, debates on Bill
Mr Marc Garneau, MP
entitled to a full pension from 55 to 65. On the day Bill C-45 was introduced, Hon. Bob Rae, MP,
C-45 continued in the House of Commons. At the outset of the debate, the government proposed a motion to limit the time devoted for debates at second reading. Read a second time and referred to Standing Committee on Finance, the government