Clause-by-clause consideration to start on June 14 at noon
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – After a disgraceful display of partisanship yesterday, the government abandoned any hope of passing Bill C-11 in the Heritage Committee and resorted to a rarely used procedure that allows it to impose strict deadlines on the workings of a given committee (which are supposed to be independent).
So, as it did for C-10, it introduced in the House of Commons a motion to set timelines for the adoption of the bill in the Heritage Committee.
The deadline for amendments to the bill to be tabled is set at midnight on June 13 with distribution to committee members in both official languages required by 9 a.m. the next day. The Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc already provided their amendments last Friday.*
Clause-by-clause consideration of the bill should start at noon on June 14, 2022.
If the committee is not finished by 9 p.m. that evening, the remaining amendments will be put to vote without debate.
We note that some 120 amendments were tabled for Bill C-10, so it is expected there will be a similar number of amendments for the committee to deal with on C-11.
When the bill comes back to the House, on an unknown date, not more than a sitting day will be devoted to debate and there will be a vote before the end of that day.
At the third reading stage, the House will be sitting until midnight and the bill will be voted before the end of that day. Cartt.ca has heard that will be done on June 21.
Then it would be sent to the Senate. As indicated yesterday, the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met last evening for planning purposes of a pre-study of the bill, but this move by the House of Commons might change the scope of their study.
The time allocation motion could probably be adopted tomorrow or early next week.
C-18 will likely get started at committee but it is doubtful it will pass that step this session.
*Update, June 10: The Conservatives indicated in the House today they have submitted some amendments already, but plan to submit more.
