| On Monday, January 6, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Governor General Mary Simon had prorogued Parliament on his request and that a new session of Parliament would resume on March 24, 2025. To help understand what this means in practice, we have developed a series of questions and answers related to prorogation, its associated timelines and what it means for stakeholders managing files and seeking to engage with the Government of Canada during this period. If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out, we will be glad to assist. What does prorogation mean? Through prorogation, all planned and existing parliamentary activity has stopped and Canada’s 44th Parliament has effectively ended. The House will resume sitting under a new 45th Parliament on March 24, 2025. As a result, the parliamentary sitting calendar, all legislation and all parliamentary committee activity are considered “dead.” This is similar to what happens to parliamentary activity during an election period. What is “dead” and what is “alive”? All parliamentary legislation and committee work is “dead.” This includes all legislation before both the House of Commons and Senate (see a full list of bills from the recently-concluded parliamentary session here) and any ongoing and/or planned studies by parliamentary committees.Unlike during an election period, all regulatory and policy development can continue during prorogation. This includes regulations developed through the Canada Gazette, Part I or Part II and the implementation of recently finalized regulations and associated policies.Federal departments and agencies will continue to receive and assess funding applications during this period, although final decisions may be delayed.All Cabinet decision-making processes will continue during this period. The federal Cabinet as it currently stands will continue to meet regularly, and ministerial decision-making powers are live and ongoing. This includes major funding and regulatory decision-making. When does Parliament actually resume? The House of Commons will resume sitting on March 24, 2025. The previous parliamentary calendar no longer applies and a new sitting schedule will be developed and published over the coming weeks.The government must table a Speech from the Throne on March 24, 2025, in order to start a new session of Parliament. When is the next confidence vote? The government is required to table a Speech from the Throne to initiate a new session of Parliament. Any Speech from the Throne, in addition to Budgets and other financially-related bills informally called “money bills”, are necessarily items of Confidence. As such, this speech will be followed by a confidence vote by Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. Typically, debate on the Speech from the Throne takes at least one full sitting day, so the first confidence vote of the 45th Parliament would likely occur on March 26, 2025. Can I engage with and advocate to the federal government during prorogation? Yes. No laws or conventions prevent lobbying during prorogation as both ministerial staff and senior officials continue to work on developing government policy and regulations. Ministers and Members of Parliament will be more challenging to engage as they will generally not be working from Ottawa and will be largely focused on constituency-related priorities. Note that there are rules governing lobbyists’ participation in volunteering on party leadership campaigns, including the potential requirement of a 24-month ban on lobbying certain officials involved with the campaign trail. More information is available here in the federal Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct. What is the date of the next election? Largely speculative, however should the government fall due to failing its first confidence vote on March 26, based on the mandatory election period established by Elections Canada, the election would fall between May 2 and May 16, 2025. What does prorogation mean for Canada-U.S. relations? Justin Trudeau, who remains Prime Minister until the election of the next Liberal leader, and members of the federal Cabinet, through the Canada-US Cabinet Committee, will continue to engage with U.S. officials in the lead-up to and following the swearing-in of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on January 20.The machinery and focus of the federal government is and will be seized with addressing the threat of U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods and identifying opportunities to respond and, more importantly, to deter. Meanwhile, Canada’s Premiers will continue to meet and define their own “Team Canada” approach to the incoming U.S. government and its proposed tariffs on Canadian goods. A next milestone on this front is the upcoming (virtual) Premiers meeting scheduled for January 8, 2025. |