Liberals want more midnight sittings, Conservatives worried about committee impact

Government House Leader Mark Holland says when MPs return to Ottawa next week he'll be advancing a motion to extend the House of Commons' sitting hours, citing Conservative obstruction.

“We have an ambitious legislative agenda," Holland said in a series of tweets on Thursday. "Conservatives continue to obstruct legislation from coming to a vote… It’s parliamentary obstruction by stealth. Canadians deserve better." 

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In an interview with CTVNews.ca, Holland said that the message he has been getting from Conservatives as he's tried to schedule House business is that they want more time to debate pieces of legislation before voting on them.

Setting up a system to allow debates to be extended to midnight would allow for that.

"It's been very slow moving on a lot of different bills," Holland said, offering examples where the Official Opposition has put up long lists of MPs to speak to bills—including ones they support—at initial stages, slowing down how soon they could come to a vote and be sent on to the next level of legislative assessment.

"It's pretty hard to view that as being, you know, an honest earnest attempt to debate a bill," he said, cautioning that while he hopes this motion solves things, the Liberals could still use other tools like time allocation to move bills along if needed.

Pushing back on the Liberals' assertion that the Conservatives are obstructing, Official Opposition House Leader Andrew Scheer told CTVNews.ca his party is making no apologies for doing their job of holding the government to account, and using their time in the House to point out flaws in their legislation.

"This is also about killing accountability by stealth," he said. As for the bills that Holland is accusing the Conservatives of talking out the clock on, Scheer said "only the Liberals would think that members of Parliament being paid by taxpayers to go to Ottawa to debate legislation is somehow justification for a procedural trick to help ram through their agenda."

The motion, set to be advanced on Monday, is still expected to pass as the NDP is voicing early support for adding in more evening sittings.

"We believe it's an opportunity for folks to express themselves on behalf of their constituents, but also move important legislation along," NDP House Leader Peter Julian told CTVNews.ca. "We're strong promoters of the idea of evening sessions," noting that for west coast MPs, late night sittings are prime time in their ridings.

Julian backed up Holland's accusations of Conservative obstruction, something he says has worsened since Erin O'Toole's ouster as party leader, with the caveat that he thinks Scheer has been “somewhat more co-operative” since Pierre Poilievre placed him back in the role this fall.

"I've said in the House that there are really two block parties in the House of Commons, the Bloc Quebecois, and the block everything party, and that's the Conservatives," Julian said.

MIDNIGHT SITTINGS FOR MONTHS?

If the Liberal motion passes, it would remain in effect until June.

That means that MPs could be burning the midnight oil for the next several months, rather than for a few weeks leading up to a scheduled break in the Commons' schedule, as is common in the late fall and spring.

Not every night will be a late one, though. If the motion passes, it would be up to a Liberal minister to secure the support of another party and then rise in the House before 6:30 p.m. that day and request that the hour of adjournment be extended to 12 a.m.

"My hope is that we don't have to use this a lot, that Conservatives will tell us how many speakers they have and there will be a fair amount of time and we won't have to use these predictions extensively," Holland said.

The purpose would be to solely debate government business, meaning opposition day motions and other procedural moves would be limited to normal hours.

While the government hasn't calculated what the additional cost would be to the House of Commons if many more midnight sittings are ahead—requiring staff, translators, security and others to stay late—Holland vowed to keep it within the pre-existing House administrative budget.

Julian said that in order for extended sitting hours to work, advance notice is going to be key to show respect to the employees who help make Parliament function.

CONSERVATIVES CONCERNED ABOUT COMMITTEES

Beyond concern for House administration, the Conservatives are sounding the alarm about how more late-night sittings may mean fewer committee meetings.

"Almost every time the house sits longer, or has extended sittings, committees get cancelled," Scheer said. "And this motion will have the effect of taking precious resources away from committees, which are investigating Liberal corruption and waste. And I do believe that that's what this motion is all about."

Scheer drew a direct line between there being multiple committees preparing to come back to Ottawa with plans to dig into concerns over mismanagement of the ArriveCan application, and reports of foreign interference in the 2019 federal election, among other issues, that the Liberals are putting forward a motion that may limit their resources.

"There's no coincidence that now halfway through the fall session, they're now trying to find a way to take resources away from committees into extended House sittings," Scheer said.

LIBERALS LOOK TO PASS ECONOMIC, GUN BILLS

Once the House resumes on Nov. 14, MPs are scheduled to sit straight through without another constituency break week until the Commons adjourns for the holidays in December.

In the lead up to the long winter break, it is common for the government to try to push through as many pieces of legislation as it can by the end of the year.

As things stand, the Liberals currently have 20 pieces of government legislation at various stages in the House of Commons, and another five bills before the Senate.

The Liberals made it a priority to push through a pair of affordability-focused pieces of legislation—Bill C-30 and Bill C-31— at the outset of the fall sitting. 

Bill C-30—implementing a temporary doubling of GST rebates— received royal assent last month after MPs from all parties unanimously agreed to fast-track it. Cheques started hitting eligible Canadians' bank accounts last week.

The other, which would implement a pair of dental care and rent support benefits for low-income Canadians, is in the Senate, where the committee studying it is scheduled to complete its clause-by-clause review next Tuesday.

Holland said that the other bills that will be priorities for the Liberals to see passed over the next few weeks are Bill C-32, which implements the new measures from the fall economic update as well as a few outstanding Budget 2022 provisions, and gun control legislation Bill C-21.

"In terms of what else we can get done, you know, I think that's an open question," Holland said.

Also stitched into this motion, the Liberals are looking to give themselves the power—as they have previously—to adjourn the House of Commons a few days early in December, and in June.