Liberals must split omnibus budget to ensure proper study

OTTAWA – The NDP moved two motions yesterday with the aim of splitting the Liberals' omnibus budget bill to ensure that wide ranging changes to more than 30 different Acts can be properly studied by Parliament.

"The Liberals once decried the previous government's abuse of omnibus bills to prevent proper study and consultation, but now they've adopted the same trick," said NDP Finance Critic Guy Caron (Rimouski-Neigette – Témiscouata – Les Basques) "We've seen time and time again that rushing so many legislative changes through parliament leads to mistakes and bad results for Canadians."

The omnibus bill runs 179 pages and contains 237 clauses that make changes to 35 separate Acts and regulations. The bill contains the entirety of bill C-12 which was already introduced in the House and would retroactively repeal an entire act of parliament. The NDP are calling for the omnibus bill to be split into separate bills.

"It is ludicrous to expect MPs to be able to analyze and debate so many unrelated measures from EI to veterans benefits to rewriting the rules of our banking system," added Caron. "We're calling on the Liberals to split the bill – just as they asked the Conservatives to do before. We owe it to Canadians to get these changes right."