While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Kady O'Malley.
As this instalment of Process Nerd goes to virtual press, there’s still time for a last-minute burst of cross-aisle collegiality that could change the numbers, but barring a sudden dramatic shift in the current dynamics, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s just-three-seats-shy-of-a-majority government is about to wrap up its first full-length sitting in office with a grand total of one bill reaching...
At the risk of casting a pall over the sense of jubilance that erupted in the precinct last night in the wake of last night’s make-or-break vote, Process Nerd has a message for both the Liberals whose minority government survived its first real confidence test since the fall sitting got underway and their cross-aisle rivals as well, many of whom...
Given the already caustic cross-aisle dynamics in the newly reconstituted House of Commons, what is most remarkable about the coordinated bid by the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois to use their combined majority clout at the committee table to make major changes to government legislation is that it hadn’t already happened. It’s also a safe bet that the current skirmish...
With the opening round of the fall sitting now officially behind them, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon and his team are undoubtedly — and deservedly — taking at least some satisfaction in their minority Liberal government’s parliamentary score sheet so far. A quick check of the record reveals that, with 38 days and counting on the clock since the new...
September 26, 2024 is almost certainly not a date that will live in infamy. It’s not going to inspire a cheeky 60-second clip in the next batch of Heritage Minutes. There’s a good chance that it may be immortalized in the footnotes of a future edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, where it will go on to puzzle...
Before diving in to the next installment in the traditional Process Nerd fall precap, a quick stroll down parliamentary memory lane: Back in the day — not quite long long ago, but long enough that direct first-hand witness accounts are becoming increasingly hard to track down — committees were widely viewed as where the real parliamentary work got done: in...
As he assembles his front bench team behind the tightly-closed doors of a makeshift cabinet room somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area, Prime Minister Mark Carney can take quiet comfort in the fact that there’s virtually no scenario in which the now-imminent fall sitting could be less productive than what would turn out to be the final stretch of then-prime...
Despite pulling off an impressive, if not particularly surprising win in his mid-August bid to regain his front-and-centre seat in the House of Commons, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will have to wait a few more weeks before he makes his debut appearance as the MP for Battle River – Crowfoot, Alta.
It took a couple of weeks, but the summer committee circuit is officially up and running. First out of the gate was Transport, Infrastructure and Communities — which, it’s worth noting, was also one of the first standing committees to be reactivated during the abbreviated spring sitting, when it was tasked with conducting a lightning-round two-day review of the government’s...
After hosting what the initial wave of reaction and media coverage suggests was a surprisingly successful huddle with his fellow first ministers in Saskatoon yesterday, Prime Minister Mark Carney is facing renewed pressure to provide a more detailed account of the nation’s finances after opposition members teamed up to support a motion demanding that his minority government present “an economic...
Even if he hadn’t been competing with the final moments of a whirlwind royal visit, there’s no guarantee that Canada’s news networks would have cut away from regular programming to provide live coverage of Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon as he was introducing a motion to temporarily rewrite the rules for reviewing the main estimates yesterday afternoon.
A little less than two weeks from today, the 343 members elected to serve in the 45th Parliament will gather in the freshly powered-up House of Commons to collectively carry out their first official democratic responsibility: namely, choosing one of their own to occupy the speaker’s throne. One of just two House voting procedures conducted by secret ballot, it’s traditionally...
First off, a (likely unnecessary) disclosure: Process Nerd is — and remains — a Charter member of what Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne calls ‘Team Minority.’ This ensures, via the raw power of simple mathematics, that no one party can override the will of their cross-aisle colleagues to control the House of Commons. It also means that MPs can...
Officially, the 44th Parliament is still on track to reopen for business — and, more specifically, the launch of a fresh session — on Mar. 24, but at this point, it’s hard to find anyone in — or outside — the precinct who expects that to happen.
Those sweeping new 20 per cent tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump is, at last check, still threatening to impose on Canadian and Mexican imports may be on hold for now, courtesy of the last-minute 30-day pause negotiated last week, but the brief reprieve from a continental trade war hasn’t stopped opposition parties from demanding an early return to regular...
With just a few days to go until the deadline for prospective Liberal leadership hopefuls to file the necessary paperwork to secure a spot on the ballot, the race to replace Justin Trudeau is about to enter a new phase. In addition to ponying up the first installment towards the $350,000 entry fee set by the party, candidates — and...
First off, a quick caveat to curious newcomers — and a reassurance to regular (or even occasional/irregular) readers: In the interests of time, Process Nerd is going to assume that anyone perusing this column has, at the very least, a basic understanding of exactly what prorogation is — and, just as critically, what it isn’t. Yes, technically, it wipes the...
It is emphatically not the beginning of the end, nor even the end of the beginning. The ruling handed down by House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus yesterday afternoon may, at least, spare the Liberals from becoming the first government in modern parliamentary history to miss the deadline to get the House of Commons to sign off on the supplementary...
Even for an inveterate Process Nerd, such statistics can be tricky to pin down, but as it heads into a fifth week of preempting most regularly-scheduled House of Commons business, the ongoing cross-aisle stalemate stemming from a Conservative-initiated privilege complaint is likely closing in on the record for the most meandering debate in Canadian parliamentary history.
There is, of course, always the chance that, at some point over the next day or two, a cross-aisle deal will be struck to extract the House of Commons from the current deadlock over a potentially precedent-setting privilege case. This could be via an all-party consensus to wind down the current debate and proceed to a vote on whether to...
As far as high-stakes political drama goes, it doesn’t (yet) have the same sense of urgency as a non-confidence vote targeting an embattled minority government. Even so, the slow-rolling standoff over parliamentary privilege playing out on the floor of the House of Commons right now definitely deserves a spot on the radar for exposing the unintended consequences of what has...
It was billed by its backers as a show of parliamentary force in a minority setting: A motion adopted during the final days of the spring sitting — initiated by the Conservatives but supported by all three opposition parties, whose combined votes easily overrode the objections of the Liberals — that ordered Auditor General Karen Hogan, along with the government...
Before digging into exactly how last week’s decision by the New Democrats to pull the plug on their supply-and-confidence agreement with the minority Liberal government — which somehow managed to be both surprising yet inevitable — it’s worth noting that, despite party leader Jagmeet Singh’s repeated assertion that the move makes the chance of an early election “more likely,” that’s...
It was billed by its backers as a show of parliamentary force in a minority setting: A motion adopted during the final days of the spring sitting — initiated by the Conservatives but supported by all three opposition parties, whose combined votes easily overrode the objections of the Liberals — that ordered Auditor General Karen Hogan, along with the government...
It’s been just over a week since the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians went public with what would instantly become the most widely-read report to emerge from its closed-door proceedings over the course of its seven-year history: A 92-page overview of exactly how foreign states like China, India and Russia have attempted to meddle in Canadian politics at...
It may have been overshadowed by the two-and-a-half minutes of twilight that briefly engulfed the precinct yesterday afternoon, but a few hours after joining the throng of staffers, tourists, downtown office workers and other assorted passersby that gathered on Parliament Hill to watch the solar eclipse, MPs ensured that Apr. 8, 2024 a lasting spot in the annals of Canadian...
Heads up to anyone with a penchant for tracking the party fundraising circuit: It may be about to get a lot harder to keep tabs on where and when party leaders are hitting the hustings. Buried in the package of proposed changes to the Canada Elections Act that made its debut appearance on the floor of the House of Commons...
As has been noted on more than one occasion in this corner, a lot can happen in a week — or, in this case, five sitting days, which is how long ago Process Nerd posted her admittedly speculative overview of what to expect from the midwinter committee circuit, in which she saw no indication that GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS AND ESTIMATES (OGGO)...
“A very unique and, perhaps, tortuous process.” While conceding that he’s hardly an objective, impartial observer, it’s difficult to disagree with interim Liberal House leader Steven MacKinnon’s off-the-cuff take on what lies ahead for Conservative MP Ben Lobb’s backbench pitch to expand the existing carbon tax break for fuel used on farms, which is now back on the House of...
“There is no unanimous consent. We are going out in style for Christmas.” So noted assistant deputy speaker Carol Hughes as she settled back into the chair following Conservative MP Garnett Genuis’s failed bid to keep the House of Commons in session for at least one more day — which, it’s worth noting, also marked the 19th time that day...
Before diving into the question posed by the headline — spoiler alert for the impatient: the answer is “almost certainly not” — it’s worth rewinding to last Wednesday, when, as iPolitics editor Marco Vigliotti reported at the time, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre took the rare step of temporarily opening his party’s weekly caucus huddle to reporters so he could unveil...
Gazing out at his fellow MPs from his front row seat at the front of the chamber on Monday afternoon, Deputy Speaker Chris d’Entremont took a moment to reflect on an exchange with his predecessor, Bruce Stanton, during which he asked whether it was a “tough job,” and if he “would be making any decisions.”
Last week, Process Nerd took a closer look at the parliamentary fine print last week to determine exactly what happens when a backbench bill undergoes a rewrite on the floor of the Senate. This time around, let’s flip the script to explore another potential procedural pitfall for private members’ business: namely, a move by the government to introduce legislation with...