The House of Commons will reconvene Saturday to debate the government’s wage subsidy legislation — a bill designed to send tens of billions of dollars to businesses disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The House of Commons will reconvene Saturday to debate the government’s wage subsidy legislation — a bill designed to send tens of billions of dollars to businesses disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A small contingent of MPs will be in the Commons for a 2:15 pm. ET start. A Saturday sitting is an exceedingly rare occurrence, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today there’s an urgent need to get the legislation passed so that bureaucrats can start paying the subsidy to eligible businesses to prevent further layoffs.
The legislation implementing the emergency wage subsidy was drafted last weekend and shared with the opposition parties on Monday.
Since then, government House leader Pablo Rodriquez has been locked in negotiations with Candice Bergen, the Conservative House leader, and representatives of the other opposition parties on proposed amendments to the wage subsidy bill. The Conservatives have said that, as the legislation stands now, it could unfairly leave some businesses without any support.
Beyond the subsidy itself, talks have been held between the government and the opposition on how best to hold sittings of Parliament at time when the pandemic has limited travel options for MPs and senators.
When asked Thursday about delays to tabling the legislation, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said negotiations were being held to decide how the opposition can effectively hold the government to account.
Trudeau said Thursday businesses hit hard by the pandemic need support as quickly as possible and the government’s wage package shouldn’t depend on the outcome of negotiations on arranging a virtual