Members of Parliament return from their summer break Monday, with the economy and trade partnerships in centre-focus after the trade war with the United States dramatically escalated over the summer months.
Prime Minister Mark Carney says his Liberal government will introduce some of the most consequential legislation in decades this sitting.
Government House leader Steven MacKinnon has promised “significant” economic legislation will become the “centrepiece” of the fall sitting of Parliament.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is poised to introduce a fresh bill to extend relief for the excise tax on fuel and has a fall budget in the works as well.
The Liberals are surging ahead in the polls and command a majority in the House of Commons.
That follows a string of floor-crossers and byelections over the past year that pushed the Liberals out of a shaky minority into a thin majority of 173 seats, That has left the opposition parties smarting with less control over the parliamentary agenda and slumped in the polls.
There are six vacant seats which will require byelections in the coming months.
Conservative stalwart Larry Brock resigned his seat in the Brantford-Brant riding last week to return to his former career as a Crown prosecutor.
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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre also held a campaign-style rally in Brantford, Ont., in the riding, just west of Hamilton on Sunday. Poilievre announced Brantford Mayor Kevin Davis will be the party’s candidate in the byelection, which has yet to be called.
New Democrats were significantly reduced in number in the last election and party leader Avi Lewis remains without a seat in the House. They return to Ottawa without longtime MP Alexandre Boulerice, who stepped down to run for a provincial seat in the Quebec election.
It leaves the NDP with just five MPs in the House.
The Liberals have had high-profile resignations of their own, most notably Steven Guilbeault. He resigned in August citing frustration with the Liberal party’s pivot under Carney’s leadership on energy and environmental policies.
Ottawa took more steps over the summer toward making a new West Coast pipeline possible. Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced in July they worked out an arrangement to support a future pipeline to the southern B.C. coast under a private-public partnership.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House has meantime cranked up trade pressure on Canada and continued to threaten its sovereignty. Trump has threatened that he will escalate his deepening trade war by the end of the year with additional tariffs on steel and autos if the two sides can’t reach an agreement.
That, after Canada’s negotiating team walked away from a potential deal with the White House in August at the 11th hour, saying that what was on the table was a bad deal for Canada.
The trade conflict escalated, with Trump imposing another volley of tariffs and threatening even more, while Canada imposed its own counter-tariffs. Trump has also since responded by attempting to rebrand Lake Ontario as Lake America and to cut off certain Canadian imports to the United States.
Carney has meantime been traversing the world at an aggressive pace as he seeks to quickly deepen ties with and attract investment from countries outside of the United States.
In the past week alone, Carney attended the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, where he delivered a major speech after the president of the European Commission said she would like to see Canada become an “associate member” of the EU. He squeezed in a quick jaunt to the U.K. on that trip for a bilateral visit with Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Carney also hosted a major investment summit in Toronto, where he won accolades from former prime minister Stephen Harper.
Carney nodded to the intense pace he’s working at while addressing his caucus on Friday, when he noticed he misspoke during his speech, saying “seven weeks” instead of “days.”
“It felt like seven weeks, but it was seven days. But this is the pace we need,” Carney said.
Carney will be in New York for meetings around the United Nations this week, though he is not scheduled to address the General Assembly.
He is expected to have more travel in the fall months, with several summits on the horizon.
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