Five days after Parliament resumed in December, it became even clearer that Canada’s current minority government situation would require the Liberals to have interaction in even deeper cross-party collaboration to perform their goals.
On Dec. 10, the Liberals experienced their first defeat after opposition parties voted in favour of a Conservative motion to strike a special parliamentary committee to probe Canada’s tense relationship with China.
Though the Liberals survived their first confidence vote that very same day, they may have to get at the very least one in all the opposition parties on-side to be certain that future votes of confidence go their way in the long run.
Listed here are among the top issues that might be tackled by Parliament over the subsequent 12 months after it’s scheduled to return on Jan. 27.
Income tax cuts
The Liberal Party’s hallmark campaign promise of an income tax cut will likely be one in all the simplest ones to follow through on, because the Conservatives had also pushed for large-scale tax cuts.
On the primary day of Parliament in early December, the Liberals introduced a motion to extend the quantity of tax-exempt income to $15,000 by 2023. The Liberals say that an estimated 20 million Canadians will profit from this, with individuals saving a median of $300 annually.
“Conservatives at all times support tax cuts,” Pierre Poilievre, the Conservatives’ finance critic, told reporters in response to the Liberal motion. “It’s in our DNA. it’s who we’re.”
Climate change and pipelines
The Liberals’ speech from the throne highlighted the federal government’s “ambitious, but mandatory” plans to realize net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. A government report from April warned that Canada’s climate, especially within the north, is warming at twice the worldwide rate.
While the speech didn’t explicitly seek advice from pipelines or the oil and gas industry in western provinces, the expansion of the TransMountain pipeline is predicted to induce essentially the most division in Parliament.
During meetings with federal leaders in Ottawa earlier this month, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney issued five demands for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, including that the federal government put a tough deadline on completing the pipeline project because the province’s unemployment rate rose a percentage point to 7.2 per cent in November.
A recent poll found that just 15 per cent of people that supported the Liberals through the fall election said the pipeline expansion ought to be a top priority, strikingly lower than the 52 per cent of Conservative Party voters who said it ought to be top of mind.
The NDP and the Greens vehemently oppose pipelines and have vowed to induce the Liberals to take aggressive stances to tackle climate change. Trudeau has said that his government would use proceeds from the government-owned TransMountain pipeline to take a position in initiatives to lower Canada’s overall emissions.
Medical assistance in dying
In September, a Quebec judge struck down the a part of the Liberals’ 2016 assisted death laws that limits eligibility to terminally ailing patients whose death is “reasonably foreseeable.” The court stated that this requirement is unconstitutional because it will possibly force patients to live in significant pain.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Christine Baudouin suspended the ruling for six months to permit federal lawmakers to reply. Within the meantime, she allowed the 2 plaintiffs to proceed with their request for a medically assisted death.
Through the campaign, the Liberals vowed to “calm down” the assisted death laws. Trudeau urged Minister of Justice and Attorney General David Lametti in his mandate letter on Dec. 13 to expand the laws.
Through the French leaders’ debate in October, the Greens, NDP and Bloc Québécois said they’d support expanding the assisted death criteria. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said his party would “evaluate” the court’s decision and can be dedicated to the protection of “vulnerable people.”
Pharmacare
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh opposed the Liberals’ speech from the throne, partially, for being too vague on its pharmacare promise.
Trudeau’s mandate letter to recent federal health minister Patty Hajdu tasked her with implementing national universal pharmacare, including the establishment of the Canada Drug Agency and a national formulary to scale back the associated fee of high-priced drugs for rare diseases.
In June, a national advisory council struck by the Liberals and overseen by former Liberal provincial health minister Eric Hoskins called for a universal, single-payer pharmacare program, the associated fee of which can be $15 billion a 12 months by the point it’s fully implemented by 2027.
Scheer and the Conservatives had previously opposed such a program.
Gun control
Earlier in December, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre by which a gunman killed 14 women, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair renewed the federal government’s gun reform pledges and said that it would soon draw up an inventory of semi-automatic weapons it desires to ban.
The Liberals had promised through the election to ban military-style assault rifles and permit municipal governments to implement their very own restrictions on handguns. Trudeau has also said the federal government will buy back roughly 250,000 military-style assault rifles at an estimated cost of $400 million.
In his mandate letter, Blair is tasked with bringing this about and in addition imposing stronger penalties for gun smuggling. Nonetheless, the federal government is not going to re-impose the scrapped long-gun registry.
The NDP, Green and Conservative parties had their very own gun reform proposals that overlap with the Liberal plans, signalling possible consensus on those plans. Nonetheless, the Conservatives had proposed harsher mandatory minimums and halting bail for repeat “gang” offenders.
