The House returns, Carney gets scrutiny and Poilievre's new tone...

Do you realize how long it has been since the House of Commons met?

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Parliament returns for the fall sitting today, it’s the first time the House of Commons has met since June 20. What’s remarkable is that in the 257 days that we’ve counted in 2025, the House has only met for 20 of them.

As it stands now, the House has not met in 87 days.

More remarkable, the House didn’t sit between December 17, 2024 and May 2025, all during a time of national crisis. Add to that the fact that between the end of September 2024 and the opening of the new Parliament on May 26, 2025 no government business was conducted due to the green slush fund scandal and the Trudeau government’s refusal to release documents to the House.

To say our democratic institutions haven’t been well served over the last year would be an understatement.

The Library of Parliament as seen from Major’s Hill Park, Ottawa. FILE: Brian Lilley, May 21, 2015.

Over the last year, the oversight function of the House of Commons hasn’t been working as it should in our system. We’ve either had inaction by government or for most of this year, government by decree with little to no oversight by the people’s representatives.

Hopefully that changes today with a new sitting.

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A change in tone…

One thing we’ve heard lots of chatter about is the need for a new tone, but primarily that’s been aimed at Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Let me point out that Prime Minister Mark Carney is also new to this and we didn’t get the full measure of the man back in the spring.

The relationship between Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre was acrimonious to say the least.

Trudeau towards the end was despised by Canadians and Poilievre couldn’t hit him hard enough in Question Period. Canadians would cheer as Poilievre would use his formidable Parliamentary skills to skewer Trudeau in the House of Commons.

Of course, Trudeau was part of the demise of the relationship and civility in the House as he showed utter contempt for the opposition, for Parliamentary rules and by extension to millions of Canadians.

Well, it’s a new government, a new leader in Carney and so yes, we can expect a new tone coming from both sides. We’ve already seen it from Poilievre in his many media appearances and news conferences over the past several months.

Poilievre has said that he and his party will oppose the government on issues where they disagree, support them on areas where they agree and offer practical solutions to the problems facing the country. That’s exactly what you want from an opposition party, which should in fact operate as a government in waiting.

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Will they really build, baby build…

Mark Carney announced a new housing czar - Ana Bailão - and $13 billion worth of tax dollars to get homes built faster and to make them more affordable.

I’ve become immune to government announcements about making housing more affordable. Maybe because I’ve been listening to them for years and only watched homes get less and less affordable.

It’s not that governments at all levels haven’t tried inject money into the system or adjust regulations to make things easier, it’s just an overly complicated system.

From local zoning and development laws at the municipal level, to provincial building codes, federal taxes and regulation, it’s complex. Now add into this an entrenched bureaucracy that doesn’t want change, competing interests from various levels of government and stakeholders and you will realize that trying to get movement is tough.

Even the best laid plans get sideswiped by external factors.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford was on the housing affordability file years before other politicians - think pre-pandemic - and despite plenty of activity, he hasn’t achieved his goals. He could never have predicted the pandemic or how that would upend the housing market, nor could he have predicted the millions of new people that would flood into Ontario in the post-pandemic era as the federal government opened the immigration floodgates.

You can’t add that many people so quickly and not see an impact on the housing market. In fact, it’s still being felt.

What are the positives of the Carney announcement?

First off, I’d say Ana Bailão is a positive. She’s being dismissed as just a former municipal politician, but she’s more than that.

Bailão had private sector experience prior to running for office, including in the banking sector. During her time in municipal office she sat on the board of Toronto Community Housing and so knows the affordable sector well. Since leaving office, she’s been working for Dream, a real estate development and asset management company.

She’s a smart woman with an understanding of the sector, I’d say give her a chance.

Secondly, the government plans to build on government owned land. That’s good, it’s worked before and it clears some immediate hurdles.

The bad?

They are heavily focused on affordable housing, which to some bureaucrats means affordable rentals, social housing, rent geared to income. It’s not that those are not important, but the housing crisis includes the fact that middle class Canadians can’t afford to buy their own homes anymore.

Unless they help fix that, this announcement won’t matter much in the long run.

Does the foreign worker program need to end…

It’s Monday, so that means podcast day.

For your listening pleasure today, we have Michelle Rempel Gardner or as I have taken to calling her, the Notorious MRG. If you’ve been following her over the past several weeks, you’ve seen her make the case for why the Temporary Foreign Worker Program must go.

You’ve seen her post about all the restaurants and retail outlets saying they can’t find Canadians to work for $36 per hour.

We sat down last week for a long chat about what she sees as the problem with this program, what the problems are in the rest of the immigration system and how to fix them.

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On Charlie Kirk…

Some nice tributes to Charlie Kirk at baseball and football games over the weekend. Still, lots of nasty commentary from people who either didn’t know him or are outright lying about him.

I can’t say I’ve seen everything the man said, but I do know Stephen King had to apologize after falsely claiming Kirk wanted people stoned to death for homosexuality. That was a complete fabrication spread by opponents online who continue to try and smear him to justify his public assassination.

In my Toronto Sun column last week, I wrote about the need for people to watch their language and vitriol, to stop calling people they disagree with Nazis and fascists.

It’s a message that I think most people get, people you disagree with are not your enemy. Too many though don’t see it that way, they view it in war terms.

The end result of my column was more people calling me a Nazi or a fascist and spreading the kinds of lies about me that they spread about Kirk. These are the same people who have been telling us language is violence and language has consequences but also entice others to violence against their political opponents.

I’ll have more to say on Kirk later.