Still bypassing Parliament?

This year’s back-to-Parliament celebration looked like one of the events connected with the Toronto International Film Festival. There was a far younger crowd, sipping champagne at the Metropolitain Brasserie, the new power watering hole adjacent to Parliament Hill.

There were plenty of low-cut dresses, a few Armani suits and a cocky, hipster insouciance as revellers munched little grilled cheese sandwiches, poutine and popcorn with their champagne. And perhaps most telling, government aides and public servants were mixing freely with journalists – something that was a no-no even before the Harper years. There were very few Conservatives present.

In all, the event was a living exhibit of how much Ottawa has changed since the October 2015 election. Some of the celebration can be tied to the great Trudeau honeymoon with the voters that just won’t end, regardless of how many mistakes the new government has made.

But the September event also shows how much the city’s culture is changing. The party also portrayed how differently Canada is being governed in 2016.

The latest example came a week after Parliament resumed Sept. 18 with a late-night announcement by three federal ministers in British Columbia that Ottawa would approve the Pacific Northwest liquefied natural gas project.

The B.C. government badly needed that approval to deliver a major promise. Ottawa badly needs the province’s support for a climate deal with the premiers in November and for approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline in December to keep a promise to Alberta.

Intergovernmental co-operation has long been important in how this country is governed. But never as important as it is now. While the previous federal government ignored the provinces as much as possible, this one depends on their support to deliver its political agenda.

Ottawa could not have delivered its reforms to the Canada Pension Plan without Ontario forcing the other provinces onside by threatening to pull out of the CPP to start its own pension fund.

The Trudeau government also is busy negotiating a redesign of medicare in behind-the-scenes negotiations with the provinces as part of the federal Liberals’ election promise to deliver a new health accord.

The provinces simply want more money to spend on their huge health-care costs. But the feds have made clear they will not play the role of an ATM. They want major structural changes to provincial and territorial health-care delivery.

In all these cases, Parliament is being bypassed. The current federal government may not have the open contempt for Parliament that the previous one did. But, so far, Parliament is not being revived as an institution as the Liberals had promised.

The Liberals will be able to continue this quid pro quo style of government as long as the Opposition parties remain without a permanent leader and without a clue about what they stand for.

Some things in Ottawa never change, of course. The Conservatives opened Parliament with a rude reminder that it is the little things in politics, such as moving expenses or $16 glasses of orange juice, that do you in.

But by forcing the two most senior aides to the prime minister to pay back money, the Conservatives may have done the Liberals a favour by providing an early lesson in the discipline of power.

Incidents like this don’t affect the polls until voters decide they are a part of chronic pattern. You can be sure every government chief of staff has received a stern memo ordering precautions going forward.

Both Opposition parties still have sizable caucuses and could very well mount a serious challenge to the government by the 2019 election campaign. But both have two years of internal reorganizing and internecine squabbling, at the least.

Meantime, the new power crowd will be partying like it was October 2015.

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