To quote Charles Dickens via the Simpsons: it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times. We’ve got our own tale of two cities in Canadian politics this week: in Toronto, the Progressive Conservative government rapidly brought emergency measures forward to the legislature, and the opposition — despite real and substantial reservations — worked quickly with the Tories to approve them. Meanwhile, in Ottawa, the first draft of the Liberals’ emergency COVID-19 response legislation was so irretrievably flawed that, when it arrived at Parliament Hill, MPs immediately suspended the House of Commons so that they could start from very nearly a blank sheet of paper.
The poison pill the federal government was trying to force the opposition to swallow: on top of the emergency-spending measures, the government wanted the power to lower or raise taxes, without a vote in the Commons, until the end of 2021. It was a direct attack on the powers of elected MPs, and they rightly insisted that the measures be deleted from the bill.
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