OTTAWA -- If a week is a long time in politics, a year is akin to a lifetime. This year in politics saw the end to one federal leader's time in office - or at least the beginning of the end - and redemption for a beleaguered senator. It also saw the Conservatives find their feet in their new role as the Official Opposition as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government started to remake some of the previous government's policies.
By the end of the year, though, the clouds started to gather: fights with the premiers over health-care funding and carbon pricing, battles with British Columbians over pipeline approvals, and the possibility of a rebuke by Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson over fundraising made the end of 2016 decidedly less sunny for the Liberals.
Here are some of the year's biggest stories in Canadian politics:
Syrian refugees
Nearly 360 communities across Canada have welcomed 36,393 refugees from Syria since November, 2015. Many of them arrived in January and February as the government went into overdrive to meet its own deadline. But, while seeing the new Canadians learning to toboggan warmed hearts, they face a number of challenges, including learning English and finding jobs. For the 20,000 government-assisted refugees, their federal funding runs out after 12 months.
Trudeau's official visit to Washington, D.C.
Trudeau and 75 ministers and staff arrived in Washington, D.C. on March 9, for an official visit with U.S. President Barack Obama. While Obama and Trudeau met, Michelle Obama and Sophie Gregoire Trudeau held their own event to promote girls’ education, where the First Lady joked the two were already getting into trouble together. All eyes were on the red carpet for the state dinner, where the Canadian delegation mingled with celebrities including Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively and Sandra Oh. Opposition MPs later requested a breakdown of costs, with the NDP eliciting a government estimate of $257,000 for the visit.
Tom Mulcair out
For NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, 2016 meant the end of this phase of his political life - albeit a long, slow fade-out. Heading into the NDP convention, pundits debated whether his support would drop below the 70 per cent or so generally thought to be the lowest a sitting leader could go without losing his mandate. In the end, less than half the party supported him in the April 8, 2016 ballot. New Democrats voted 52 per cent in favour of finding a new leader - meeting the official threshold set out in the party's rules to trigger a race. Mulcair decided to stay on as leader until the next one is chosen in September, 2017.
Assisted dying
Up against a Supreme Court-imposed deadline, the Liberal government introduced its medical assistance in dying legislation on April 14. The bill was the government's response to the top court's ruling that consenting adults intolerably suffering from grievous and irremediable medical conditions have the right to request help in ending their lives. The legislation only covers adults and those whose deaths are "reasonably foreseeable," leading the B.C. Civil Liberties Association to note the woman at the centre of the Supreme Court case wouldn't have had the right to die under the legislation (Kay Carter ended her life outside the country in 2010). The Senate initially fought the legislation, but eventually consented to the bill with minor changes. Earlier this month, the government announced the Council of Canadian Academies will study "requests by mature minors, advance requests, and requests where mental illness is the sole underlying medical condition," three factors the Liberals said needed more consideration before being allowed.
Mike Duffy cleared
More than three years after the first questions were raised about his living expenses, Senator Mike Duffy was cleared of all 31 charges against him. While Judge Charles Vaillancourt acquitted Duffy on April 21, he wrote a scathing rebuke of how Stephen Harper's Prime Minister's Office handled the situation. With Duffy cleared, the Crown soon dropped similar charges against Senator Patrick Brazeau and former senator Mac Harb, and the RCMP announced it was dropping its investigation into Senator Pamela Wallin. Duffy, Brazeau and Wallin all returned to the Senate.
CPC gay marriage
Conservative Party members gathered in May for their biannual convention where they dealt with a variety of policy and constitutional questions. The one that got the most attention was the debate over whether to delete the party's policy defining marriage as between a man and a woman. While same-sex marriage has been legal in some provinces since 2003, and across Canada since 2005, the party's policy book still explicitly limited its support to straight marriage. The party voted 1036 to 462 to modernize its policy, with Conservative leadership candidate Brad Trost one of those in favour of keeping the old one.
Pipelines
The government spent a year pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and in early November threatened to impose a tax on any province that didn't price carbon on its own. On Nov. 29, Trudeau and his cabinet approved two pipelines: Kinder Morgan's $6.8-billion Trans Mountain pipeline, which will run through Burnaby, B.C., and Enbridge's $7.5-billion Line 3 expansion, which runs from Alberta to Wisconsin. At the same time, Trudeau killed Enbridge's Northern Gateway proposal, arguing its path through the Great Bear rainforest made it a no-go. He also promised a moratorium on tanker traffic in the Douglas Channel. Still, the Liberals risk losing support in British Columbia, while not satisfying Albertans who want to see even more capacity to export oil.
Indigenous relations
Trudeau committed in each cabinet minister's mandate letter that no relationship is more important "than the one with indigenous peoples," and said he'd implement the 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation report. Last week, he met with Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and David Chartrand, vice-president of the Metis National Council, to commit to regular meetings between cabinet and Indigenous leaders. A national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women is due to start in the new year, and the government promised $8.4 billion in its last budget for urgent needs, like addressing boil-water advisories on reserves. But problems remain: huge gaps in funding between on-reserve and off-reserve education, a refusal by the federal government to comply with Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders regarding on-reserve child welfare services, and some First Nations oppose the Kinder Morgan pipeline Trudeau's government approved last month.
