In House Panel looks ahead to Parliament's return
There will be more than the economy on the agenda when Parliament returns — the ISIS mission, Senate appointments, physician-assisted dying, electoral reform, and the list goes on. In House panelists Emmanuelle Latraverse, parliamentary bureau chief for Radio-Canada, and La Presse parliamentary bureau chief Joel-Denis Bellavance share what they will be looking for.
The World Economic Forum in Davos was this week. How did Trudeau do in his sales pitch to some of the world's wealthiest?
JB: I think he did a great job. I think he wanted to rebrand Canada and that was part of his strategy. Now the real work comes back when the House resumes on Monday, and that's going to be the tough part — to sell this optimism to a very tough crowd in Ottawa.
EL: He did well, he was well-received. I think there's a danger though for him in this "I'm confident Canada will do well!", because it's not in line with what people are hearing elsewhere. We'll really know in a year if he's lived up to these great expectations he's set.
JB: That's going to be the hard part. You can't give all of the pie to everyone, and there are tough choices the Prime Minister is going to have to make.
The House is coming back on Monday for the first time for a full session. What are you looking for?
EL: I'm going to look for something on the first day. You talk about the tone of the government — if there's one file where they should deliver on that promise, it's physician-assisted death. The committee is meeting on Monday. There's not a unanimity of points, and there's not a natural cohesion among the MPs on this panel. Are they able to put aside their differences and work on this constructively? If they can do that on this panel, which is so sensitive, I think they can do it on others.
JB: The big issue I'm following is what kind of shape the future mission in combating terrorism will take. We don't know what the government has in mind, it has not told anyone nor its allies, so there's a bit of a vacuum there. I think the government should try and fix this by announcing quite rapidly in the first couple of weeks what shape this new mission will take.