The Harper government is refusing to split up the budget bill, which is expected to pass by June 8 or by June 22 at the latest.
ACTION ALERT: Split up the budget: Environmental and border policy changes need a full debate
May 8, 2012
The Conservative government has cut short debate on the 400-page budget implementation act (Bill C-38), which contains major changes to environmental regulations, immigration law and Canada-U.S. border policy that demand full parliamentary scrutiny.
Opposition parties are proposing to break the bill up, or at least pull out its most controversial non-budget related parts. These include:
Measures to repeal the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act
Cracking down on charities who engage in political activity, with a bulls eye on environmental groups
Changes, including new shorter timelines, to the environmental assessment process for oil, gas, mining and other resource projects
Giving the government new authority to approve things like mines or new pipelines despite the results of National Energy Board hearings
Changes to the Fisheries Act so that only commercially important fish are protected
Changes, beginning in 2023, to the age of eligibility for Old Age Security payments to 67 from 65
Making cross-border (Canada-U.S.) maritime law enforcement, whereby U.S. officers patrol the Great Lakes and other shared waterways on RCMP boats, legal and permanent.
New powers allowing the Citizenship and Immigration Minister to reject an applicant to Canada who has already been deemed admissible by immigration officers, set limits on what types of immigrants can have their applications processed each year, and require that ineligible persons applying for residence on humanitarian grounds to already be in Canada when they apply.
NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen said, “It is inappropriate to put so many sweeping changes to so many different areas in the budget bill.” The party is calling for the bill to be split into at least five parts. Cullen explained, “A bad budget lasts a year. These implementations will last perhaps a generation." Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has called the Conservatives’ omnibus budget bill “scandalous” and “illegitimate.”
TAKE ACTION
The Harper government is refusing to split up the budget bill, which is expected to pass by June 8 or by June 22 at the latest. We need to put pressure on the Conservatives to do the right thing by democratically debating all of these non-budgetary, highly controversial items separately instead of rushing them into place in an anti-democratic omnibus law.
Source : http://canadians.org/action/2012/Bill-C38.html
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