With Christmas and the New Year traditionally associated with goodwill, the leadup to the season was a timely moment for the new parliament to get down to work.\u00a0 Not only does the holiday help quell any hard feelings that linger from the election, but it offers Members an opportunity to reflect on those things that bring us together.\u00a0 The truth is, there are more commonalities than differences between the people that represent us in parliament.<\/p>\n
The fact that we are working in a minority situation bodes well for efforts to make the workings of the House less partisan and more functional.\u00a0 With no clear majority, the government is forced to work with partners to pass legislation.\u00a0 Although the scenario can be seen unstable and we will hear about the government potentially falling numerous times in the months and years to come, there is no reason to suspect that will happen any time soon.<\/p>\n
The reality is that most of those stories are largely overblown and made for sensational news stories more than anything else.\u00a0 Although there are some significant differences on important issues, there is more overlap amongst the parties on some very important issues as well.\u00a0 That means government should find willing partners among the opposition parties when they move to address climate change, affordability, the economy, health care, and many more issues that were championed by two or more political parties in the election.<\/p>\n
That should bode well for Canadians.\u00a0 Of course, there will be disagreements over how to best approach any issue, but the government will have to bend to the wishes of at least one partner to move any item forward.\u00a0 This could result in better legislation that considers a wider spectrum of concerns as it is developed, debated, and implemented.<\/p>\n
One of the most difficult things for a minority government to pass is a budget.\u00a0 This is where case-by-case support is tested since budgets are larger plans that can contain items which may conflict with a supportive partner\u2019s policies.\u00a0 The fix may lie in unpacking that legislation into numerous bills instead of employing the omnibus model that has become par for the course under recent governments.\u00a0 Opposition parties have been calling out governments for cramming too many non-budgetary items into the omnibus budgets already.\u00a0 Doing so would open the potential to pass budgets quicker and to approach more contentious items as stand-alone bills that may not be considered confidence votes.\u00a0 It would help alleviate some of the election anticipation that accompanies budgets in minority situations.<\/p>\n
The good news is that minority governments have delivered for Canadians on some significant items that we now consider part of the makeup of the country.\u00a0 Items like universal coverage of hospitalization and Medicare, the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans, the Canada Assistance Plan, the Canada Student Loans program, official bilingualism, the 40-hour work week, tax credits for political donations and disclosure of donations over $100, your right to information (Freedom of Information Act), the gas tax transfer, legalization of same-sex marriage, and the Residential School Apology were all products of a minority parliament.<\/p>\n
With all this in mind it is worth considering that Canadians gave themselves an early Christmas present when they didn\u2019t elect a majority government.\u00a0 Minorities have consistently performed in a way that delivers results.\u00a0 In the 2015 election Canadians were promised they were going to be given electoral reform.\u00a0 The committee recommendation was for proportional representation which is supposed to deliver decisions based in consensus.\u00a0 Although we don\u2019t have a parliament based on proportional representation, we do have one that will have to seek consensus for big decisions.\u00a0 That is as close as we can get with the system we operate under.<\/p>\n
Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I hope your holidays are filled with warmth and joy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With Christmas and the New Year traditionally associated with goodwill, the leadup to the season was a timely moment for the new parliament to get down to work.\u00a0 Not only does the holiday help quell any hard feelings that linger from the election, but it offers Members an opportunity to reflect on those things that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-federal"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-20 12:40:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26962"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26964,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26962\/revisions\/26964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}