Canada geese with Parliament Hill in the background.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney has committed to not proroguing Parliament to take control of House of Commons committees if the Liberals win three coming by-elections and form a slim majority.
The Globe and Mail reported Monday, citing two Liberal party sources, that the government has been considering proroguing Parliament after the April 13 by-elections.
But Mr. Carney told reporters Tuesday that he will leave the committee system as is, with the Liberals in a minority situation even if the party wins all three by-elections.
“Absolutely not. It has never even entered my thinking a possibility of that, so I couldn’t be more surprised to see suggestions that is under consideration,” Mr. Carney told reporters Tuesday.
The Prime Minister has been navigating a difficult minority Parliament that has limited its ability to control committee agendas and passage of legislation.
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 Québécois, and legislation can be delayed for months, as happened with the government’s budget implementation bill.
Mr. Carney said he is content to work with opposition parties who currently control Commons committees.
“We are absolutely focused on working with Parliament, getting legislation through Parliament,” he said. “We will have to make compromises to do that and we have shown that consistently.”
Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon also said Tuesday that Ottawa is focused on “work towards a Spring Economic Update that builds a stronger, more independent, more competitive Canadian economy.”
A Liberal sweep of all three ridings would bring the party’s 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.
But even with a majority, to restructure Commons’ committees, the government would 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.
If the Liberals win the three by-elections, the Liberal sources said, one option being looked at 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.
The Globe and Mail is not naming the two sources because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
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.
The Globe is not naming the official, who did not want to publicly discuss the government’s parliamentary strategy before the April 13 vote.
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 Québécois candidate who lost the riding of Terrebonne by a single vote to Liberal Tatiana Auguste.
In recent months, the Liberals have persuaded three Conservative MPs and one NDP MP to cross the floor, but they still need the three by-election wins to have a slim majority.
Two other senior Liberals told The Globe that there are also internal discussions of naming the Prime Minister’s 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.
The sources said the discussions focused on Mr. Pitfield becoming government leader in the Senate, with a seat at the cabinet table.
The current government’s representative is Quebec Senator Pierre Moreau. He manages the government’s legislative agenda but is not a member of cabinet and cannot attend meetings.
The Prime Minister’s deputy chief of staff, Braeden Caley, told The Globe that Mr. Carney has “full confidence” in Mr. Moreau and there are no plans “at all for a change to the excellent work he is doing as Government Representative in the Senate at this important moment for Canada.”
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.
There are currently eight Senate vacancies. But there is no indication whether Mr. Carney would keep the appointment system under Mr. 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.