sneaky

It’s crowded onto the budget implementation bill, which the Liberals have already promised to vote for. Turns out a lot of stuff has sneaked into the bill, whose relation to fiscal stimulus can be hard to discern. So the budget bill becomes an omnibus bill that seeks to make a bunch of changes that cannot therefore, individually, be discussed or debated or potentially defeated one by one. This is not unique or unprecedented; as justice minister, Anne McLellan thought it was brilliant to cough up an omnibus bill every year or so, with a jillion incompatible changes to things, instead of seeking Parliament’s piecemeal approval for each of them. But look at what Le Devoir columnist Manon Cornellier has dug up.