TORONTO — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, deprived again of the majority he sought in an unpopular snap pandemic election in September, will outline his legislative agenda Tuesday for a new session of Parliament.
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In a ceremony filled with ancient traditions, pomp and pageantry, Governor General Mary Simon, who represents Queen Elizabeth in Canada, will deliver the Speech from the Throne. The address is written by the prime minister and his aides and details his government’s ambitions and priorities.
The makeup of the new Parliament looks virtually unchanged from the last one. Voters dealt Trudeau a rebuke in September’s elections, leaving his party 11 seats short of the 170 needed for a majority in the House of Commons and dependent — again — on the backing of opposition parties to pass his agenda.
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Much as in the old Parliament, the Liberal Party leader will probably lean on the left-leaning New Democratic Party and the separatist Bloc Québécois for support. Those parties are aligned with him on several key policy areas, such as combating climate change and creating a national child-care program.
“We’ve had a lot of great conversations with other opposition parties about areas where I expect we can work together,” Mark Holland, the leader of the government in the House of Commons, told reporters Monday, “and the spirit of those conversations has been one of cooperation and collaboration.”
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Over the next four weeks, Holland said, the government intends to pass bills guaranteeing 10 days of paid sick leave per year for federally regulated workers, banning conversion therapy and continuing some pandemic economic supports. The Liberals also want to make it illegal to block access to any building where health care is provided or threaten health-care workers.
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“The speech from the throne tomorrow will obviously focus very heavily on the circumstances of the pandemic and putting the pandemic behind us and continuing growth,” Holland said Monday.
The speech, which is read in the Senate, usually provides a broad overview of a government’s agenda, but rarely provides nitty-gritty details on how programs might work or what they will cost.
Still, the address can signal whether the government intends to offer olive branches to opposition parties and foreshadow potential flash points — including with provincial premiers, whose support the government might also require for agenda items in areas of shared jurisdiction.
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It’s typically put to a vote, which the government must win to stay in power.
The speech comes as the government responds to the aftermath of a once-in-a-century storm in British Columbia last week that caused flooding and landslides that have been blamed for at least four deaths, led to fuel rationing and destroyed key highways, effectively choking Vancouver off from much of the rest of Canada.
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It remained unclear what format the new session of Parliament would take with the pandemic not yet over. The Liberals favor a hybrid Parliament with some lawmakers physically present in the House of Commons and others joining remotely. The Conservatives and the Bloc want all lawmakers to attend in-person.
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With vaccination against the coronavirus mandatory for all those in the parliamentary precinct, there’s been a focus on the vaccination status of Conservative lawmakers. All parties but the Conservatives have confirmed that their members are fully vaccinated.
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has said his lawmakers will be able to participate, meaning they’ve been vaccinated or received a medical exemption. But Holland, who said he didn’t know how many Conservatives had received exemptions, told reporters “the math doesn’t add up.”
During the campaign, the Liberals sought to use their support for vaccine mandates for federally regulated employees and plane and train passengers to gain an advantage over O’Toole. The conservative leader says he supports vaccination but won’t mandate it. The mandates enjoy broad support here.
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O’Toole has chided some lawmakers for sowing misinformation over the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and issues surrounding vaccines have divided his caucus. His party, meanwhile, has been mired in squabbling over his leadership.
The throne speech will be the first delivered by Simon, a former diplomat who is Canada’s first Indigenous governor general. Her appointment was widely celebrated but drew some displeasure in French-speaking Quebec. Simon is bilingual in English and Inuktitut. She has promised to learn French.
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