{"id":572696,"date":"2026-03-31T10:43:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/572696\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T10:43:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:43:07","slug":"government-looks-to-prorogue-parliament-if-liberals-sweep-april-13-by-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/572696\/","title":{"rendered":"Government looks to prorogue Parliament if Liberals sweep April 13 by-elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Liberal<\/a> government is considering proroguing Parliament to gain control of House of Commons\u2019 committees and more easily push through legislation if the party wins all of the three by-elections taking place on April 13, two Liberal Party sources say. <\/p>\n

Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s<\/a> government has been navigating a difficult minority Parliament that has limited its ability to control committee agendas and passage of legislation.<\/p>\n

Membership on committees is decided by the number of seats each party has in the Commons after a general election. In a minority Parliament, the Liberals can be outvoted on committees by a combination of Conservatives and Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois, and legislation can be delayed for months, as happened with the government\u2019s budget implementation bill.<\/p>\n

A Liberal sweep of all three ridings would bring the party\u2019s seat count to 173 in the 343-seat House of Commons, which is one more than a bare majority. This would prevent the opposition from defeating the government in a confidence vote. <\/p>\n

But even with a majority, in order to restructure Commons\u2019 committees, the government would still likely need to turn to prorogation, a procedure that ends the current session of Parliament and releases MPs from their parliamentary duties, including committee appointments.<\/p>\n

Konrad Yakabuski: Liberals and Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois both have a lot riding on Terrebonne by-election<\/a><\/p>\n

If the Liberals win the three by-elections, the sources said, one option being looked at carefully is for the government to have a short prorogation, come back with a new Throne Speech and revamp the committee system. Another option is to prorogue in September, the sources said.<\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail is not naming the two sources because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.<\/p>\n

A third source said the government could also try to change the standing orders on committee membership without prorogation. But the government official said the Conservatives and Bloc would put up a political fight and likely mount a filibuster to keep the current committee standings that were set after the general election last April. <\/p>\n

The Globe is not naming the official, who did not want to publicly discuss the government\u2019s parliamentary strategy before the April 13 vote.<\/p>\n

Reordering the party standings on committees without prorogation would require a motion approved by the House of Commons. In order to win such a vote, the Liberals would need 173 votes \u2013 one more than a bare majority. If the Liberals only have 172 seats following the by-elections, such a motion could result in a tie, in which case the Speaker, by tradition, is required to vote in favour of the status quo and it would not be approved. <\/p>\n

Canadians abroad call for increased voter turnout ahead of by-elections<\/a><\/p>\n

Former Liberal House leader Don Boudria, an expert in parliamentary procedure, said the simplest way to get control of the committees is to prorogue.<\/p>\n

\u201cProrogation would cause the committees to be reconstructed because nobody would be a member of any committee,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, the safe view in my opinion is to have prorogation and, secondly, a motion to change the proportionality behind the committees before the committees are reconstructed within 10 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The by-elections are being held to replace empty seats after the departures of former cabinet ministers Chrystia Freeland, and Bill Blair. A third by-election was made necessary after the Supreme Court of Canada granted an appeal from a Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois candidate who lost the riding of Terrebonne by a single vote to Liberal Tatiana Auguste. <\/p>\n

In recent months, the Liberals have persuaded two Conservative MPs and one NDP MP to cross the floor, but they still need the three by-election wins to have a slim majority.<\/p>\n

Two other senior Liberals say there are also active discussions to appoint the Prime Minister\u2019s principal secretary, Tom Pitfield, to the Senate with a mandate to get legislation passed quickly. The Globe is not naming them because they are not authorized to speak publicly about internal party matters. <\/p>\n

Former Ontario NDP deputy leader running for federal Liberals says Carney unites across political spectrum<\/a><\/p>\n

The sources said Mr. Pitfield has indicated that he would like to become government leader in the Senate, with a seat at the cabinet table. Mr. Pitfield\u2019s spouse, Anna Gainey, is a former Liberal Party president and sits in cabinet as Secretary of State for Children and Youth.<\/p>\n

Mr. Pitfield\u2019s father, Michael, was appointed to the Senate by then-prime-minister Pierre Trudeau after serving as Clerk of the Privy Council.<\/p>\n

In 2014, then-Liberal-leader Justin Trudeau expelled all Liberal senators from the national caucus, forcing them to sit as Independents. When the Liberals were swept into office with a majority in 2015, Mr. Trudeau ended the tradition of having the government representative in Senate attend cabinet meetings.<\/p>\n

The current government\u2019s representative is Quebec Senator Pierre Moreau. He manages the government\u2019s legislative agenda but is not a member of cabinet and cannot attend meetings.<\/p>\n

The Senate finance committee released a report earlier this month that said a return to a cabinet position for the government\u2019s Senate leader would strengthen co-ordination between the two parliamentary bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cRestoring the Leader of the Government in the Senate to the cabinet table could enhance communication, improve legislative planning, and give the Senate a stronger voice in setting realistic timelines for reviewing BIAs [budget implementation acts]\u201d, the report said.<\/p>\n

There are currently eight Senate vacancies. But there is no indication whether Mr. Carney would keep the appointment system under Justin Trudeau, which was intended to choose non-partisan and independent senators. Under Mr. Trudeau, would-be senators were recommended by an outside panel, but the decision was still up to the prime minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Liberal government is considering proroguing Parliament to gain control of House of Commons\u2019 committees and more easily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44,714],"class_list":["post-572696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}