MPs scramble to pass priority bills before summer break

OTTAWA — The House of Commons rose Wednesday for the summer — and possibly for an election — after giving eleventh-hour approval to what the minority Liberal government considers its priority legislation.

But it’s far from certain the Senate will be as accommodating.

Three priority bills have landed in the Senate over the past couple of days and a fourth is expected to arrive later Wednesday in the upper house, where some senators are balking at the prospect of rushing them through at lightning speed.

The Senate was scheduled to wrap up Wednesday, but senators agreed that evening to sit until the late hours of Monday and Tuesday. It took unanimous consent to extend the sitting in its current hybrid format, adopted to allow for virtual participation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senate committees have already conducted pre-studies of two of the four bills — C-30, the budget implementation bill, and C-12, which would set targets for achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 — so they’re likely to make it to a final vote.

The Liberal budget bill cleared the Commons on third reading by a vote of 211-121 with support from the New Democrats and Bloc Québécois, paving the way for key commitments that include pandemic-relief programs like the wage and rent subsidies’ extension through September.

But two other pieces of legislation — C-6, a bill to ban conversion therapy aimed at altering a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and C-10, a controversial bill to regulate online streaming giants — would require unanimous consent to fast-track through the Senate, without study by a committee.

Although senators have agreed to extend the sitting, it’s not clear they’ll sit long enough to wrap up all four priority bills.

Any bill that is not passed by the Senate will die if, as many suspect, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls an election this summer.