What Does it Mean to Prorogue Parliament?
On August 18th, the Liberals announced that they would be ‘proroguing’ Parliament until September 23rd, when the government will deliver a Speech from the Throne and launch a new session of Parliament. This is supposed to be followed by a budget or economic update later in the fall.
So what exactly does this mean?
It’s simple. By proroguing Parliament all Committee investigations into Trudeau’s ethics violations are ended. Further, all Bills, Motions, Committees, House deliberations and debates, and official document requests are effectively cancelled.
Let’s put this into perspective:
• The last House sitting of the session planned for August 26th has been cancelled. This means under Trudeau, the House will have met less than 50 times over an entire year.
• All Government Bills currently in progress through the House and Senate have been terminated. This means the sexual assault law training for judges originally introduced as a Private Members Bill by Rona Ambrose is terminated for the 2nd time due to the Liberals playing politics.
• All order paper questions expire and the government is no longer required to respond to any outstanding questions.
• My team and I put many written questions on the House’s Order Paper. These are questions sent out to Ministers and Departments that force disclosure on things like PPE procurement, contract disclosures, wasteful spending, corporate welfare to Liberal friends, Trudeau and his family’s speaking fees for WE and others, and more. Due to prorogation, they were all cancelled and the Liberals are no longer required to respond.
Most importantly, the move to prorogue Parliament shuts down all committee activity until at least September 23. Even after that, there will be many weeks of delay before committees resume operating.
Three different committees were investigating the WE Charity controversy, including the finance committee, the ethics committee, and the government operations committee which I lead for our party. All this is directly following the release of over five thousand documents suggesting that Liberal Ministers were actively working with WE. Because of prorogation, this investigation will now go dark for six weeks.
Instead of owning up when he was caught, Trudeau shut down Parliament. Now he has locked out Opposition MPs who were working hard to fix his government’s pandemic programs, representing Canadians, and getting to the bottom of this corruption scandal.
Keep in mind, we are dealing with one of the worst
crises Canada has ever faced. We have billions of dollars in aid programs, PPE
concerns, a shut-down economy, and a potential second wave anticipated to hit
in just a few months. There are questions that need to be asked, data that
needs to be reviewed, and gaps in service that need to be filled. We can’t
do that with Parliament shut down.
Trudeau’s hoping you will forget by next month. We won’t.
Thanks for reading,
Kelly McCauley
Member of Parliament
Edmonton West