39th Parliament, 1st Session Summary

It's official. The first legislative session is over. When the Parliament resumes on October 16, a new session will commence with a new Throne Speech and a clean slate. The old bills will have to be reintroduced, but unlike the private bills that are automatically fast-tracked to the state they were before the prorogation, it's back to square one for the government bills.

So what was achieved during this session? Here's how it all breaks down:

Accountability and Democratic Reform:
It began with Bill C2, The Accountability Act, a complex piece of legislation aimed to combat corruption and keep corporate and union funds (as well as personal wealth) out of politics. Apart from C2, the government succeeded in passing bill C16, which gives us fixed election dates as well as bill C31, that tightens rules on voters' identification at the polls. (The latter however got watered down by the opposition and the Senate, so not all the measures were implemented.) Finally, there was the bill C48 to implement UN Convention Against Corruption.

Among the bills that didn't pass were bill C54, to close the loophole on political party loans, ensuring those loans don't become donations, bill C55 to provide more days and more locations for advance voting and bill C56 that would have reduced the penalizing effect on the three most populous provinces which results from the existing representation formula. Those bills were introduced just weeks before the Parliament recessed for the summer, so they didn't have much time to pass.

And, of course, we had the two Senate Reform bills, S4 and C43 that were stalled by the opposition. Hopefully the government gets them passed, so in the 2009 election we get the opportunity to elect our Senators along with electing MPs.

Public safety and anti-crime bills:
Those were fiercely opposed by the opposition parties whose ideology states that crime should be addressed by eliminating "the social cause", rather by tightening the sentences. The fact that their "social cause" lean-on-crime approach only resulted in much more crime is apparently beyond their comprehension. So we got a lot of those bills watered down and many more - purposely stalled by the opposition.

Among those that passed were: Bill C9 which denies conditional sentencing to those committing serious crimes, bill C19 which cracks down on street racing, bill C25 that combats money laundering and even bill C59 to penalize unauthorized recording of a movie.

But there were plenty of others that didn't pass, among them: Bill C10 that would have enforced minimum sentences for firearm-related crimes, bill C27, dealing with the dangerous offender designation, bill C32 to increase the penalties for impaired driving and the bill C35 to reverse the onus in bail hearing for firearm-related offenses. Next time someone gets shot in your neighborhood, thank the Liberals, the NDP and the Block.

Some other bills that passed:

• Bill C14 that simplifies citizenship requirements for children adopted abroad.
• Bill C24 that resolves the softwood lumber dispute with the US.
• Bill C36 which simplifies the requirements for CPP and OAS benefits.

Among other bills that didn't pass were:

• Bill C22 to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16.
• Bill C30 the used to be Clean Air Act. It was mutilated beyond recognition by the opposition parties that substituted anti-pollution measures with carbon taxes and other Kyoto-related scams.
• Bill C44 that would extend the Canadian Human Rights Act provisions to the native reserves, giving aboriginals more legal tools to hold their governments accountable.
• Bill C57 that would close the loophole in a skilled worker visa program, so strippers and prostitutes could no longer qualify as "exotic dancers" whose skills are "in demand on Canada's labor market".
• Bill C62 to ensure the effective operation of Wage Earner Protection Program, to close the remaining loopholes which allowed the companies to use bankruptcy as an excuse not to give workers their last paycheck.

Overall - not bad for a government that is 30 seats short of the majority. Hopefully, some of the bills that didn't survive the first session, get passed in the second (or become campaign issues if the opposition parties choose to bring down the government). And it would be nice to see the Conservatives seizing the policy initiative and advancing Conservative priorities more vigorously than they've done so far.