And we have the absurd situation where the government has introduced three pieces of legislation without establishing the standing committees required to scrutinize the bills. (Government House leader Mark Holland said he planned to meet opposition House leaders later Tuesday and expected that committees would be up and running before Christmas. That seems optimistic in the extreme, given there are only 14 sitting days left in which to agree on the time-consuming business of committee membership, electing chairs and so on. Even if they are struck, they are unlikely to have time to scrutinize legislation already before the House).
The reality is that the Liberals do not want committees to sit because they are an inconvenience to passing all the brilliant legislation that the government believes is so exquisitely crafted, it cannot be improved. In a minority parliament, the opposition parties have the majority in committee and in the House, if they band together. They did so back in March 2020, when the Trudeau government attempted a de facto suspension of parliamentary government with its first COVID relief bill, which gave the finance minister the power to tax, spend and borrow with impunity (and without parliamentary approval) for an 18-month period.
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