Good morning,
The MPs are back in town and they’re ready to get legislating. Today begins a stretch of sitting days in Parliament that will stretch through June (assuming they don’t decide to leave early).
The Liberal government has a lot to get through before the summer break. Its major priority will be getting through the bill to legalize marijuana, but other legislation has also started to pile up. For instance, the government will likely move -- as early as today -- to limit debate on its new voting bill, so that Elections Canada has more time to implement it. Critics point out that the government probably should have started debate on the bill sooner if time was of the essence.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa, Mayaz Alam in Toronto and James Keller in Vancouver. If you’re reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
CANADIAN HEADLINES
Finance Minister Bill Morneau will be up late tonight: the Opposition has chosen him for a four-hour evening grilling in the House of Commons. Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen gets to join the fun on Thursday night.
Conservatives say Stephen Harper will probably step out of the limelight again if he proves to be too much of a distraction.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley intends to skip an annual gathering of Western premiers amid an increasingly contentious fight with her counterpart in British Columbia over the Trans Mountain pipeline extension. Ms. Notley says she will focus her energy on the pipeline debate at home.
Opponents of a property tax increase in B.C. targeted at high-value homes say they’re raising money to fight the policy through lobbying and possibly a lawsuit. The NDP government’s latest budget imposed an increased school tax on homes valued at more than $3-million as part of a suite of policies aimed at the housing market.
And as legislation to legalize recreational marijuana plods along in the Senate, there are two claims that are repeatedly cited by skeptics in the Red Chamber: that ending prohibition will lead to a spike in teen use, and that cannabis is a so-called gateway drug. The Globe fact-checked those claims, finding that existing research doesn’t support them. However, with the issue of teen use, most of the research is related to American states that only recently legalized the drug and experts say more data is needed.
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on the federal NDP pipeline position: “Traditionally, the NDP has been pretty unified in purpose. It was the Conservatives who had to tend coalitions, like the patching of social and fiscal conservatives. But increasingly, the NDP is struggling to satisfy both its green, environmental-activist wing and the lunch-bucket concerns of its old-school constituency of unionized workers – who are committed to the NDP in theory but not always in practice.”
Don Braid (Calgary Herald) on the Alberta-B.C. pipeline spat: “The best hope, it seems to me, is still for a last-minute compromise that would allow [B.C. Premier John] Horgan to back down. But there is still no hint of storybook salvation.”
Adam Radwanski (The Globe and Mail) on the Ontario Progressive Conservative campaign: “Doug Ford had a couple of months to prepare for his first election leading Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives. He lacks a coherent message and is constantly on the defensive, but will likely wind up premier of Canada’s most populous province anyway.”
Toronto Star editorial board endorsing the election of Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner in Guelph: “Yet by dint of Schreiner’s own optimistic personality, or perhaps the candour that comes from having nothing to lose, it is arguably the Green leader who has been the most forthright leader in the campaign for the June 7 Ontario election. Schreiner frankly argues for the merits of a single publicly funded school system in Ontario and an end to separate-school funding for Catholic schools.”
John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on casting a protest vote: “As a form of protest, declining your ballot is preferable to not voting or spoiling your ballot, because it’s unambiguous. After all, people don’t vote for any number of reasons, the most common being that they’re too busy or too lazy.”
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