In House Panel - Parliament returns and Paris gets under way

With a busy week coming up, including a throne speech and the start of the Paris climate change conference, In House Panelists Mark Kennedy, parliamentary bureau chief for the Ottawa Citizen, and Elizabeth Thompson, senior writer for iPolitics, set the stage. 

What are you looking for in terms of how the government prioritises their new agenda?

Elizabeth Thompson: I'm going to be looking at the dynamic of the new House. What is that new dynamic going to look like? You've got the Liberals, very new to their jobs. On the other side of the House, you've got the Conservatives who are still trying to digest the fact that they're not in government anymore — and yet, they also know what's in those filing cabinets the Liberals inherited, including some things the Liberals might not have found yet. 

So how aggressive are the Conservatives going to be? How aggressive is the NDP going to be? Are they going to be able to knock Justin Trudeau off his game, and how easy is it going to be to do?

Mark Kennedy: It will be fascinating to watch the chamber after nearly a decade of a different style under the Conservatives, which was more partisan, more hard-edged. We'll want to see whether Trudeau and his people adopt the same kind of approach. The other thing to watch is: who's not the Official Opposition leader anymore? Tom Mulcair. He's back in the corner.

How do you think Prime Minister Trudeau will perform in the House?

ET: That will be a true test. He's promised to be more open, more transparent. That would suggest that he would be more present as Prime Minister. We may be surprised in terms of how well he performs in Question Period. There's a lot of attention to detail that goes into being Prime Minister, and how much is he going to trip up on that detail? His team is great at the bold, strategic moves, the symbolic gestures, the messaging, but then they overlook some small little detail.

MK: The thing we need to know about Justin Trudeau is just because he wasn't necessarily comfortable asking questions doesn't mean he won't be good at answering them. He's actually quite comfortable and confident taking questions. He was never comfortable asking questions in that place because of, often, the fake outrage that goes along with it. He never wanted to do that and he never did that terribly well. I think we'll see a different Trudeau taking questions.

How important is it that Justin Trudeau show that Canada is back, in more than just words, at COP21?

ET: At the moment, he's heading in with a united front. That will make it a lot easier for him in the negotiation phase, because he can rapidly consult the provinces and get rapid feedback if he's going too far.

MK: In terms of international optics, Justin Trudeau is going to find that the premiers are with him — that it's time to rebrand Canada. He'll get through this meeting, but then he has to get through another meeting in 90 days where the rubber really hits the road. Can he actually get an accord with the premiers that will meet the targets?

Elizabeth, you recently wrote an article on the Conservatives appointing 49 people to extensions of terms that hadn't expired yet earlier this summer. What can you tell us about that story?

ET: It turns out that in June, July, they re-appointed a bunch of people to renewing their jobs which, in some cases, weren't due to come up for another year or so. The one that's particularly perhaps problematic for the government is the National Energy Board, because that's the body that controls pipeline regulation, oil and gas imports — things that the Harper government cared quite a bit about, and things that the Trudeau government also cares about, but in a quite different way. It looks like with those advance appointments, the Trudeau government won't be able to name a full-time member of the National Energy Board. They won't have a vacancy come up until 2020.

MK: It puts Mr. Trudeau in a corner, but what it could do is damage the reputation of the party that's just been defeated. It will create a bad taste in the mouths of voters.

ET: It also raises questions about some of those ministers who proposed those future appointments, who did run for re-election and were re-elected, like Lisa Raitt.

Listen to the full panel discussion in the player above.