Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon wouldn’t offer a date for when he would move a motion to make the change, but told reporters on Wednesday that “it’s pretty generally accepted that the composition of committees must reflect the composition of the House of Commons.”
The Liberals appear poised to rework the composition of committees in the House of Commons after securing a majority in Monday’s byelections.
Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon wouldn’t offer a date for when he would move a motion to make the change, but told reporters on Wednesday that “it’s pretty generally accepted that the composition of committees must reflect the composition of the House of Commons.”
A motion passed at the start of the Parliament last spring evenly split membership on committees between the governing Liberals and the opposition Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois. This allows the opposition parties to team up to vote down the government as committee chairs don’t vote unless there’s a tie and most committee chairs are assigned to the government.
It was widely expected the Liberals would pass a motion to change the committee composition once they secured a majority, and Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday criticized “performative” debates at committee that he blamed for slowing down legislation.
He specifically cited debate at the justice committee over the government’s anti-hate bill as an egregious example, noting that in one case an MP “read into the record their love of cats and dogs.”
“There’s a difference between real testimony, real substance, getting to issues, debating aspects of law, advancing — that’s the job of parliamentarians — and showboating,” he said.
“We’re going to have less of that. We’re going to have more substance. I think all parliamentarians in the end, we’ll appreciate that, even if it’s a change for some of them.”
Carney was referring to comments made by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton, who was voicing his opposition to an amendment to Bill C-9 that would remove the religious exemption for the hate speech crime.
He was attempting to make the point that without free speech, Canadians would be limited to debating their preferred pets.
Conservative MPs said the government was attempting to rework committees to silence the voice of the opposition, noting the Liberals are stalling efforts at the ethics committee to compel Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne to testify about his personal relationship with a senior executive at the Crown corporation helming the high-speed rail project.
Conservative MP Ellis Ross said it’s stonewalling from the government that’s derailing the work of committees.
“Committees… just try and get facts and truth and we have a tough time from ministers, trying to get facts and truth. So, the showboating thing, I haven’t seen that yet,” he said.
As other outlets have reported, Champagne’s office has provided an email from the federal ethics commissioner’s office stating the minister was not in a conflict of interest. This is because Alto is accountable to Parliament through the minister of transport, not the finance minister, the email read.
Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett pointed the fingers at the Liberals for sowing dysfunction at committees and defended his party’s work studying bills and holding ministers to account.
He noted the Conservatives have lined up in support of several government bills, including the recent budget implementation legislation, and questioned if the Liberals were reorganizing committees to quiet dissent.
“I think Canadians deserve more than a rubber stamp from parliamentary committees, and though the Prime Minister wouldn’t be the first to find to find Parliament inconvenient, it’s a fundamental piece of our Westminster parliamentary democracy,” he told iPolitics in an interview on Wednesday.
Barrett added that he believed the Liberals were attempting to stall the work of the ethics committee in calling Champagne to testify until their new MPs are sworn-in and the party moves to a majority.
Since Parliament opened last spring, the Liberals have been forced to retool bills after criticism from the opposition benches.
The government’s first border security bill, C-2, was pulled amid outcry from privacy advocates and opposition parties, who objected to measures that would give police the power to obtain subscriber information without a warrant and grant Canada Post an expanded authority to open mail, among other changes.
Neither measure was contained in the stand-alone lawful access bill, known as C-22, that was introduced last month.
Bill C-9 was also reworked at committee after discussion with faith communities, to clarify the legislation doesn’t apply to “worship, sermons, prayer, religious education, peaceful debate, or even the good faith of reading and discussion of religious texts.”
Asked by iPolitics what reassurances the government could offer that the Liberals wouldn’t steamroll dissenting voices, Justice Minister Sean Fraser said they listen to “other parties and to people from other backgrounds not because of the numbers in the House of Commons, but because actually improves the quality of decisions we make.”
“There’s actually a lot of engagement that goes on between the government and other parties, and I hope that’s going to continue — for my part as a minister, it’s certainly going to continue,” he said.
“We’re going to engage with people from different walks of life in community but also in the House of Commons. I think Canadians are expecting that the government, as we espouse a Team Canada message in our international dealings, are going to breathe life into that value in our engagement in Parliament.”
Posted by IHateTrains123
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It’s so funny that both Canada and Australia could be run by red-coloured governments for 1000 years
Government House Leader Steve MacKinnon said Wednesday that parliamentary committees should reflect the makeup of Parliament, as the [previous article](https://www.ipolitics.ca/2026/04/14/how-the-liberals-could-use-their-new-majority-clout-to-reconfigure-house-committees/) mentions the governing Liberals do have the ability to push through a new sessional order that will give them a majority in these committees. Previously the makeup was divided evenly between the Liberals and the opposition Conservatives and Bloc, which left committees vulnerable to obstruction.
!ping Can
>Carney was referring to comments made by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton, who was voicing his opposition to an amendment to Bill C-9 that would remove the religious exemption for the hate speech crime.
That amendment came about as a result of the mechanism the liberals want to remove. And it’s a good amendment, because giving a religious exemption for hate speech makes no sense.
In spite of all the good Carney has done with his foreign policy, the party’s domestic policy around social issues is awful.
Nobody talks about it here because it’s a US-centric sub so most of the discussion is about what takes place outside of Canada; and Carney is hitting it out of the park on foreign relations. But the greatest hits right now domestically are:
* Canada Public Transit Fund is unusable because its budget is incomprehensible.
* A gun buyback scheme so incomprehensible police are refusing to enforce it.
* A hate speech law that had a religious exemption that allowed for hate speech if you were religious about it.
* A demand subsidy for gasoline (removing the federal excise tax temporarily) which wasn’t even good as a slopulist “look at me I’m doing something” moment because in the same week it was cancelled out by the price increase caused by the switch to summer fuel blends.
* And a recently proposed bill (that hasn’t been drafted yet) a “think of the children” type thing that will force age verification for social media – explicitly outlined to be handled by the social media companies. All of whom are massive Trump donors.