Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Opposition could pass climate bill against Harper's wishes!

This may be possible, if the Liberals have the nerve:

If Parliament enacts C-311 the Copenhagen Bill – New Democrats’ Climate Change Accountability Act - it will replace Harper Conservatives’ inadequate policy approach* with a credible, urgent plan that will quickly decrease Canada’s greenhouse gas pollution.

For C-311 NDP Climate Change Accountability Act to become law:
1. Wednesday, October 21, 5:30 pm, all opposition MPs must vote no to delay.
2. Last week of October: all opposition MPs vote yes to C311.
3. November: speedy approval at the Liberal-dominated Senate.
If every Liberal MP shows up in the House of Commons to support Bill C-311 without delay, it will become law before December’s United Nations meeting.


The people of Canada, through its Parliament, will say yes to the Planet in front of the world at Copenhagen.
Source. Question is, will the Liberals cooperate? One would think they'd be fools not to...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The problem with your scenario is that any climate bill would end up being a money bill thus would become a confidence motion. The opposition parties are not brave enough to go to an election on the climate issue when public opinion is no longer convinced that the climate change rhetoric is in fact settled science?

nitroglycol said...

I'm not sure that's the case. Why would this be a money bill?

Coincidentally, I was talking to a cabinet minister about this kind of thing the other day (not in connection with this bill; it was a hypothetical discussion). My question to him was, if an opposition member introduces a money bill and it passes, would that be considered a vote of non-confidence in the same way that defeating such a bill introduced by the government would be? His answer was that such a situation could not arise, since the speaker would have ruled the bill out of order as soon as the opposition tried to introduce it. Apparently opposition members, and even government backbenchers, cannot introduce money bills; only cabinet ministers can. Since this bill was allowed to be debated, that suggests to me that it is not considered a money bill.

In any case, this discussion is now academic, owing to this.