Thursday, November 16, 2017

Ontario still taking advantage of omnibus bills

The issue of omnibus bills raises its hoary head once again, this time in Ontario provincial politics. The ruling Liberals have introduced a bill that combines two entirely unrelated issues: a bill to clamp down on drivers illegally passing school buses, with new cannabis legislation.
Now, why would they do that? The Conservatives call it a "blatant and dishonest a use of the legislative process"; the Liberals counter that "this is just conspiracy thinking", claiming that it is merely a way of a getting a busy legislative agenda through to a final vote in an expedient manner.
I hate to say it, but I'm with the Conservatives on this. This kind of convenient bundling is inexcusable, and the Bill should be split up into its it's constituent parts so that each issue can be voted on independently. Or, at the very least, the speaker should have the power to split up voting in such combined bills, as is now the case at the federal level.

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