How summer shaped the fall sitting: old issues with new focus, and shifting party dynamics

Although Parliament is re-opening under the same formal “session”—meaning no new Throne Speech and no re-articulation of government program—political watchers should expect a difference in how some hot files play out when the House resumes Sept. 18. While the priority policy themes are largely unchanged between June and September, some will re-emerge in autumn with sharper or more urgent focus, while other hot files might find themselves somewhat cooled. And beyond the policy files themselves, the summer’s shift in polling has also changed the inter-party dynamics, meaning more political leverage for some and less for others. Though housing and cost-of-living have been top-of-mind politically for some time, both will be even more acute in the fall. Housing, in particular, was a festering political wound throughout the summer, dominating discussion at the midsummer cabinet retreat. Sensing an ongoing vulnerability for the government, both national opposition leaders—Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh—equally prioritized the theme. No issue featured as prominently in Poilievre’s marathon speech wrapping up his party’s policy convention earlier this month. Even his slogan, “Bring it Home,” was fashioned as a double-entendre implicitly underscoring the lack of housing stock and the increasing unaffordability of both home ownership and rent. For his part, Singh is newly emboldened by the polls; the junior partner in the Liberal-NDP supply-and-confidence agreement is now floating the idea of adding a national housing strategy (and pronto!) as an explicit condition of continuing to keep the government afloat. With the Liberals having fallen considerably in summer polling, fear of an election gives Singh real leverage. Polls suggest his party could re-emerge from an early election with roughly status quo, whereas the Liberals would almost certainly lose government. The government’s confrontation of “Big Tech” will continue in the fall, despite the passage of media bill C-18 just before the summer hiatus. Though now settled legislatively, the underlying issue is anything but. Facebook reacted to attempts to compel a news carriage subsidy by simply refusing to carry the news links for which it had been so criticized. This yields an awkward conundrum for the government as Canadian news media are worse off than before Facebook’s boycott, while seemingly complying with the government’s underlying motivation for its legislation. News organizations are smarting, and this adds pressure to the social media giant’s war of attrition with the feds. More to come on this file, especially with the pressure higher than ever. The one policy area that may cool slightly—at least during the fall—is the hot potato of foreign political interference. While the issue overall continues to be a potential time bomb for the government (possibly on the scale of the 2006 Gomery Commission Report), the newly launched inquiry also has an expanded mandate beyond the initial and immediate flash-points of China's interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections, and the targeting of specific MPs’ families. With a broader scope to include Russia, Iran, and even India, the inquiry hearings themselves will have a somewhat diluted impact, though no doubt still promising to yield intriguing findings. The reports themselves—interim in February, and final by December 2024—could still be dynamite. But the process leading there could be diffuse, calmer, and more academic than we’ve seen form the Chinese interference controversy so far. This means a slight breather for the government over the file. Maybe. The final difference this fall will be the degrees of swagger that follow parties’ polling fortunes like mercury in a thermostat. Expect more humility from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet, whose ratings have slumped significantly since spring. With the Conservatives polling in majority-government territory, one can easily expect more swagger from them, though the leader has reportedly cautioned his MPs not to display arrogance amidst their new popularity. And the NDP will continue its fine dance: the party can’t really afford an early election, although they will know the Liberals will want one even less. Expect more demands, showdowns and threats of withdrawal from their deal. In other words, there will be an interesting few months around the corner. Yaroslav Baran is a co-founder of Pendulum, a strategic communications consultancy. He is former communications chief to Stephen Harper, and was responsible for all communications planning related to the CPC’s founding convention in 2005. He is also chair of the board of the Parliamentary Centre, and practitioner-in-residence with the Clayton Riddell Graduate Program in Political Management at Carleton University in Ottawa. The Hill Times

How summer shaped the fall sitting: old issues with new focus, and shifting party dynamics

While the key policy themes in Parliament are largely unchanged from June to September, some will re-emerge in autumn with sharper or more urgent focus.

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How summer shaped the fall sitting: old issues with new focus, and shifting party dynamics

While the key policy themes in Parliament are largely unchanged from June to September, some will re-emerge in autumn with sharper or more urgent focus.

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