If the prime minister calls an early election as expected at the end of April, it will erase any chance that the Senate will have time to approve Canadian Wheat Board reform legislation, the chair of the Senate agriculture committee said last week.
Even if the government finds a way to rush the bill through the House of Commons this week, the Senate will not give it special priority or rubber-stamp it, said Saskatchewan Conservative Len Gustafson.
“I just think they have left it too late,” he said. “The government is rushing to dump a lot of bills on us, expecting us to just rubber-stamp them and even some on the government side are getting disturbed.”
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Gustafson said a number of Senators will want to speak on the wheat board bill if it arrives from the Commons.
Then, he will want his committee to hold at least a day of hearings.
“Absolutely, we will want to call at least some of the major players before us as witnesses,” said Gustafson. “I have been listening to the debate and talking to farmers and they see some flaws here that we have to examine.”
In what are assumed to be the dying days of this Parliament, the government is trying to push scores of bills through the Commons, expecting the Senate to deal with them almost without debate to get them into law before an election is called.
All legislation that has not received approval of both houses of Parliament dies when Parliament is dissolved for an election.
Items facing the increasingly cranky senators range from high priority law-and-order bills and Canadian Labor Code amendments to the endangered species bill, legislation limiting tobacco advertising, authorizing the commercialization of the St. Lawrence Seaway and dealing with native land claims.
If prime minister Jean ChrŽtien calls the election during the week of April 28, the Senate will have very few sitting days available to deal with the flow.
