Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland provoked outrage after asking senators to pass an $8.9 billion budget bill they had not yet read, Blacklock’s Reporter reports. The greatest portion of Freeland’s last-minute increased spending bill tacks on $3.2 billion to cover interest charges on the national debt. It also goes towards defence spending and federal pay increases, as well as housing loan losses and federal prisons. This is not the first time the Trudeau Liberals have tried to get a bill passed before it was adequately reviewed. Bill C-67 An Act For Granting To His Majesty Certain Sums Of Money, seeking approval for new spending in the billions to take care federal expenses until the end of the fiscal year (March 31, 2024), without disclosing the legal text of the bill.“Prudent spending is the government’s focus,” said Sen. Patti LaBoucane-Benson, Cabinet’s legislative deputy in the Senate, adding the failure to publish the bill in advance was “really a House of Commons problem.”“You need the bill to vote on it,” said Sen. Elizabeth Marshall, a former provincial auditor.“I haven’t seen the bill. It’s not posted. I don’t know how we can vote on a bill that we haven’t seen.”It took the House of Commons a total of eight minutes to pass Bill C-67 Thursday evening. Senators suspended the meeting for an hour while clerks distributed copies of the bill. “This is an embarrassment,” said Senate opposition leader Senator Donald Plett. “I am being asked to vote on a bill I haven’t seen. (Senators ) need to get a copy of the bill so we know what we’re voting on.”In addition to the $3.2 billion to go towards paying interest charges on the national debt, Freeland’s bill proposes $2.2 billion more for national defence and $1.2 billion in pay increases for federal employees. The bill granted Canada Mortgage And Housing Corporation (CMHC) an extra $101 million to cover loan losses and write-offs under the National Housing Act and approved an extra $34.6 million to run the federal prison system.“I want to bring up a little bit of history,” said Sen. Denise Batters. “This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened.”Parliament from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic on Friday, March 13, 2020 in less than two hours passed without debate three budget bills granting cabinet wartime spending powers for 90 days. The Commons then voted itself out of session for five weeks. Blacklock’s that day confirmed no text of the bills was disclosed until hours after they were signed into law.“The House agreed to buy a pig in a poke,” Conservative MP Scott Reid said at the time. “The House adopted bills it had not actually seen and whose contents were therefore unknown. Panic is never, ever an excuse to override our ancient political conventions.”“These conventions are the oldest and best protections that exist for our political liberties.”Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government then used the bills to grant itself authority to borrow without parliamentary scrutiny a total $350 billion by March 31, 2020. The sum was greater than Canada’s federal government spent in the Second World War.
