Government House leader Mark Holland participates in a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 20, 2022.
While it may not have been particularly surprising, it’s likely not how Team Trudeau’s lead bill-wrangler, Mark Holland, had hoped to kick off the parliamentary new year. Less than five hours into the new sitting, his government had already been put on notice that its last-minute bid to expand its proposed new gun restrictions to include a working definition of “prohibited weapons” might not make it to the finish line — not just once, but twice.
First up was Holland’s New Democrat counterpart, Peter Julian, whose party had enthusiastically backed the bill during its first pass through the Commons at second reading, who now rose to ask the Speaker to rule the amendment out of order, on the grounds it went beyond the scope of the original bill.