Opposition parties up in arms as Liberals use majority to speed up legislation before summer

With only when years left wing before MPs head up support to their ridings for the summer, the Liberal government is aiming to pass key pieces of legislation while it can — but the legislative rush has opposition parties crying foul.

The Liberals moved into majority territory in April and have been using their numbers to speed up some bills the government sees as a priority.

But with the House expected to rise on Friday, the Liberals have upped their efforts to avoid having to deal with certain issues when MPs return to Ottawa in September.

In the past month, the Liberals have voted seven times to pass "time allocation" motions — essentially setting specific deadlines for bills. By comparison, there has only been one other time allocation since the start of 2026.

Green Party Leader May Elizabeth May, who has been an MP since 2011, said the Liberals' use of time allocation and large omnibus bills is the "worst" she has seen during her time in the House.

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"I feel democracy itself is disrespected. Parliament itself is disrespected," she told reporters on Wednesday in Ottawa, likening the capital city to a "democracy theme park."

Bloc Québécois MP Christine Normandin said she is used to seeing time allocation to speed up legislation near the end of a sitting, suggesting that the Conservatives used similar tactics when they were in power.

But she argued that the record for most use of time allocation will be "broken by the Liberals in a very short period of time."

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Conservative MP Michael Barrett characterized the Liberals' shift from operating in a minority Parliament to a majority as "stark."

Earlier this spring, the Liberals added a number of their MPs to House committees and gained voting control. Despite that move, individual MPs typically are able to take the time to debate and put forward amendments when dealing with legislation in committee.

But this week, the Liberals introduced two motions in the House in an effort to force certain committees to get on with two pieces of legislation: Bill C-30, which implements portions of the spring economic update, and C-22, the Liberals' lawful access bill.

Both of those motions set a retroactive deadline for MPs to introduce amendments to those bills.

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Conservatives on Tuesday accused the Liberals of trying to "ram" the lawful access legislation through the House without proper consideration.

Conservative public safety critic Frank Caputo told reporters that his party would be willing to advance a portion of the bill, but said the second half has "been way too quickly brought to committee. We need to see more of it."

The Liberals also used their majority voting power to skip over routine House proceedings this week — such as allowing non-government MPs to introduce their own legislation — to leave more time for government business.

Liberals defended their push to pass legislation, saying this is how the House usually works around this time of year.

"It feels the same. It feels like we're at the end of a season. We're trying to get our agenda through," Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu said on her way into question period.

Hajdu pointed to opposition MPs forcing adjournment votes, which would end the sitting for the day, as an example of "obstruction and delays" coming from the other side of the aisle.

Hajdu says end of term legislative rush is 'the same' every year

But Conservative MP Michael Chong pushed back, saying it's on the Liberals for not having a "good legislative agenda over the past couple of months."

"That's on the government for having introduced legislation and failing to defend it, failing to explain it properly," he told reporters.

It is typical for governments to try and push through priority bills before the House rises for long breaks. The periods before the summer and winter recesses are often referred to as "silly season" on the Hill.

Conservative MP calls government's legislative agenda 'problematic'

But this spring sitting stands in stark contrast to last year, when MPs were fairly co-operative having just come off of the election campaign and worked together to get some legislation passed in a relatively short amount of time.

NDP Leader Avi Lewis says he doesn't think the past few weeks have been business as usual in the House.

"This is how it works when you have a majority government that thinks it can act with impunity," Lewis said.

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Lewis specifically pointed to the rush to pass Bill C-22 as a prime example of the Liberals trying to get legislation passed without full scrutiny.

"This is not business as usual. These are unprecedented times and they're unprecedented measures and they deserve the light of day and of public debate — and not to be shoved through at the end of a session," the NDP leader said.

Senior writer

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