PUBLICATION GLOBE AND MAIL 
DATE:  WED NOV.12,2003 
PAGE:  A29 
BYLINE:  JOHN IBBITSON 
CLASS:  Report on Business 
EDITION:  Metro DATELINE: 
WORDS:  754 

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POLITICS
Dancing the final gavotte in Ottawa
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JOHN IBBITSON

So, where are we? At about 8 p.m. EST on Friday, Jean Chretien will cease to be leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. On that day, or maybe the day before, his government will ask the Governor-General to prorogue Parliament, ending the current sitting and leaving its legislative agenda in suspended animation. Smart money is betting that Mr. Chretien now intends to step down as prime minister some time in mid-December or early January. (He still wants to do a December trip to Africa as PM.)

Once the handover is finally accomplished, prime minister Paul Martin will ask the Governor-General to recall Parliament in January or early February, and to present a Throne Speech outlining his government's priorities.

Then will come a flurry of legislation instituting democratic reforms; a budget that will, among other things, announce major new funding for cities, education and health care; and, some time between the crocuses and the tulips, an election call.

At least, that would have been the plan, had the Senate not screwed everything up.

As you have heard, the upper house threw a wrench in both Mr. Chretien's and Mr. Martin's agenda last week by torpedoing, not one, not two, but three important pieces of legislation.

For you and me, the most important bill they axed was the new law toughening penalties for cruelty to animals. For the two prime ministers, the biggest problem is electoral boundaries, which were to be changed in time for a spring vote, but which Tory senators delayed to the point that no one is certain now whether an election can be held before August.

That the Liberals are so obsessed with riding boundaries represents the triumph of politics over policy. There are other things -- huge

things -- that have been thrown into limbo, both by the Senate's filibustering and by Mr. Chretien's and Mr. Martin's calculations.

Proroguing Parliament early (it was supposed to sit for another month) means that vital legislation regulating cloning and research using human embryos is stalled in the Senate; legislation creating a new ethics commissioner that the Senate kicked back to the House remains stuck there, while a bill to decriminalize pot possession awaits another round of debate before final reading.

The Chretien legacy, in other words, remains frozen in legislative time, partly because of the Senate and partly because Mr. Chretien refuses to appear in the House when Mr. Martin is Liberal leader.

In which case, what happens next?

The news, for those who believe the legislation listed above is important and needs to be passed, is not all gloomy. When Mr. Martin recalls Parliament, the Senate will go to work on the reproductive-technologies bill. It should clear the chamber within a few weeks.

Mr. Martin is solidly behind the legislation on the ethics commissioner, so we can expect him to get the House to amend the bill and send it back to the Senate.

Mr. Martin's people have let it be known to members of the committee studying pot decriminalization that they favour seeing the bill go through, so with any luck the House will pass it by the end of March.

The animal-cruelty legislation, sadly, is beyond rescue, and the status of legislation legalizing same-sex marriages is unclear. (It depends, in part, on when the Supreme Court hands down its opinion on the legality of the proposed legislation.)

As for whether the riding-boundary legislation gets passed by the House and implemented by Elections Canada in time for a spring vote, instinct says that what the Martin machine wants, the Martin machine will get. Though frankly, why should any of the rest of us care?

You'll have noticed the irony in all of this.

Jean Chretien, who detests Paul Martin, must now rely on the incoming prime minister to get a large chunk of his legacy agenda passed.

And Mr. Martin, who detests Mr. Chretien, is going to have to devote most of the crucial early weeks of his mandate to fulfilling his predecessor's priorities.

Of course, if we were governed by grownups, Parliament would not be prorogued and all the legislation would be passed by Christmas. It is, after all, what we pay Parliamentarians to do.

But as Messrs. Martin and Chretien dance their final gavotte, no one seems ready to spare more than a passing thought to the business of governing the country.