With less than three sitting weeks left, the government has announced that they will introduce yet another bill, this time to give the Minister of Transport enhanced powers when it comes to ordering vehicle recalls. The bill won’t be tabled until later in the week, and there’s no timeline for its passage, but Lisa Raitt is confident she’ll get all-party support for the bill to expedite it. Of course, it’s not guaranteed, and in the light of the recent Takata airbag recall, it does start to smack a little bit of desperation, that the government is doing one last push to show that they’re on top of things, even though they knew this deadline was coming, and this recall issue has been going on for weeks now. As well, they have nearly twenty more bills that they want to pass before the Commons rises, and as it stands, it looks like some of their showcase bills, like the “life means life” parole bill, aren’t going to make it, and Peter MacKay is admitting as much. This speaks to a couple of different issues – one is that there are doubtlessly bills that they’re going to allow to die so that they can campaign on them, both as unfinished business and under the falsehood that the opposition held them up (which really, they can’t do given that this government has the time allocation hammer and aren’t afraid to use it) so they need another majority in order to get these kinds of measures through. Of course, it also showcases that this government – and Peter Van Loan as House Leader – has been spectacularly terrible when it comes to the basic management of getting bills through (not that it’s all Van Loan’s fault – the NDP haven’t exactly played ball when it comes to any routine House management either, and it has been said several times that Peter Julian has managed to make Van Loan look downright reasonable). Suffice to say, good luck to Raitt, because she’s probably going to need it if she wants to get this bill through.

Good reads:

• The Duffy trial resumed briefly, and we heard the argument that the Senate audit is privileged as committee testimony, which is protected from the courts. Nicholas Köhler detailed how the judge heard another full case that day instead.
• Aaron Wherry rightly laments the abundance of clapping in our Parliament.
• There is scepticism that the government will have a real plan for reconciliation once the Truth and Reconciliation Report is tabled. Recommendations from the Report will include adopting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
• Apparently CRA has difficulty tracking if donations flowing into the country are going to religious institutions that are radicalizing Canadians because of freedom of religion.
• After agreeing with the NDP on the “tampon tax,” the government is also going along with their motion on “pay-to-pay” fees, because you can’t have too much populist outrage.
• The government is going to appeal the decision not to dismiss the Federal Court challenge to Senate vacancies.

Odds and ends:

Former senator Mac Harb’s trial is being postponed in part because of delays in the Duffy trial.

The government announced their defence procurement independent panel’s membership.

More MPs are looking to wear tinfoil hats when it comes to WiFi and cellphone radiation.