Experienced MP and current Speaker Francis Scarpaleggia will have to use all his wiles to ensure the fall session does not descend into chaos.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on September 1, 2025.

The summer’s over, and the kids are going back to school.

The House of Commons will also soon return for the fall session.

The back-to-school period and the return to the House face some parallel challenges.

The first thing a teacher must do in the classroom is establish order and set themselves up for success by ensuring their students do not descend into chaos.

The Speaker of the House has the same challenge. Francis Scarpaleggia is a seasoned member of Parliament who has served his constituents in Lac–Saint–Louis, Que., for more than two decades. Prior to his first election in 2004, Scarpaleggia served for a decade as the assistant to Clifford Lincoln, the predecessor MP for the riding. Scarpaleggia also started volunteering for the federal Liberal Party more than 40 years ago. He knows his stuff.

But he is a newly-minted Speaker who needs to establish his authority in the chair very early.

The previous two House Speakers—both Liberals—were bounced for what could be considered rookie mistakes. Greg Fergus was censured when he appeared in his robes in a video that aired at the Ontario Liberal leadership convention in 2023, while Anthony Rota mistakenly invited a man who had fought alongside a Nazi unit to witness a speech to the House by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, also in 2023.

Scarpaleggia’s experience will prevent him from making those types of mistakes, but he will face a larger challenge.

Normally, the House of Commons remains calm and cordial for the first couple of years of a new government.

Most members of Parliament are exhausted from campaigning and certainly don’t relish the thought of going to the polls again. Nor do the voters.

But in this instance, the return of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre means all bets are off.

There are also a couple of new developments, which will make the management of the House much more challenging.

Thoughts of the upcoming Quebec election will be in the air since it has to be held before Oct. 5, 2026. If the results of a recent byelection are any indication, there is a good chance the Parti Québécois might form government.

PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is promising to hold a referendum in his first term. Separatist icon Lucien Bouchard, also known for founding the Bloc Québécois, has publicly warned against that move.

In a Radio-Canada interview on Aug. 20, Bouchard said that if the referendum became a central element of the campaign, it would be a gift to the Quebec Liberals.

“From memory, there aren’t a lot of Quebec political formations from the Parti Québécois who have been re-elected with the promise of holding a referendum because it becomes an election issue. …The Liberals fuel themselves on that,” he said.

The separatist movement in Alberta will also cast a shadow on Parliament. Now that the opposition leader holds a seat in rural Alberta, he will have to carefully play this wedge issue to retain support from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and core members of their respective parties.

Poilievre has just come off his own personal re-election campaign and appears happy to continue the themes of his last unsuccessful election campaign.

According to Poilievre, Prime Minister Mark Carney is already worse than former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

The Conservative leader tends to keep his fangs sharpened in and out of the House, and his party will follow him in that regard. This makes Scarpaleggia’s job more difficult than it would normally be at the beginning of a new Parliament.

The House is also dealing with a prime minister who is relatively new to the rules of parliamentary process. Carney is obviously a quick learner, but sometimes in the heat of the moment, the notion of calm leadership goes out the window.

Carney has definitely developed a thick skin in serving as governor of the central banks of both Canada and the United Kingdom. In those roles, he was on the receiving end of many political barbs when MPs were unhappy with interest rates or monetary policy.

But in the House of Commons, one has little time to react to an insulting question.The instinct to attack in return has to be tempered by the public expectation that a prime minister should be calm and measured.

The same holds true for the Speaker. Scarpaleggia has a calm demeanor, but a raucous House will also demand a strong voice in the chair.

The Speaker will have to use all his wiles to ensure the fall session of the House does not descend into chaos.

Like the teacher managing a new classroom, the Speaker needs to have a good first week.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Maxime Bernier’s ideas should be defeated at the ballot box, not in the back rooms of the Leaders’ Debates Commission.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 26, 2019.

OTTAWA—The broadcast debate rule makers need to take another look at their election work. By the current rules established for party leader participation, floor-crosser Lucien Bouchard would have been silenced.

At the time of the 1993 election, Bouchard was the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, having been previously elected as a Progressive Conservative. His party did not field candidates across the country, the second of the three criteria established for entering October’s debates.

The rules currently bar the People’s Party of Canada from the debate because leader Max Bernier was elected as a Tory. Can you imaging the uproar if the founding leader of the Bloc had been denied a seat at the televised debating table?

Rules say a party must run candidates in 90 per cent of the ridings across the country, which again eliminates new regional parties like the Bloc. The threshold for support is either a reasonable chance to win a couple of seats, or support from approximately four per cent of the popular vote in a general election. Current polling numbers situate the PPC just under 3 per cent with a chance to win one seat. Those numbers will fluctuate once the campaign begins.

Not surprisingly, the decision to block Bernier has been met by other parties with muted acquiescence. Conservatives are breathing a sigh of relief because Bernier is trying to tap into the right wing of their base. New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh went so far as to claim the party should be blocked because its viewpoints are odious, and do not deserve a platform.

Many Canadians might have felt the same way about a separatist party, but it was never denied a voice at the table.

Politicians of any stripe should not welcome state-mandated censorship, even when they vehemently disagree with another party’s viewpoint. An organization headed by a sitting Member of Parliament, with candidate recruitment across the country, deserves a chance to be heard.

Last weekend, Bernier’s party held a countrywide candidates’ convention in the nation’s capital, attended by 500 people. The party has managed to nominate candidates from coast to coast and has even recruited some dubious stars, like the widow of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

Bernier, who came within two percentage points of leading the Conservative Party, is no political neophyte. His father sat as a Tory member before him, and with his deep roots in that party, Bernier also managed to recruit a number of former Conservative colleagues. Most of them claim to have left the Conservative party to pursue more freedom of speech. They believe the current crop of Tories are too mainstream, denying debate on race and immigration issues.

The PPC is officially advocating a reduction in annual immigration targets by two-thirds, and an end to multiculturalism in the country. Their leader also claims that climate change has not been caused by human activity, despite ample scientific evidence to the contrary.

I am not a fan of Bernier’s ideas. From his misrepresentation of global warming to his call to build a wall against Canadian immigration, he represents the antithesis of my political philosophy. But surely his viewpoint is relevant.

If politically-appointed committees are destined to decide which perspectives can be aired, how does that strengthen democracy?

Bernier’s ideas should be beaten at the ballot box, but he should not be outside the debates looking in. That only strengthens his party’s capacity to play the victim card. Marginalized supporters will claim that their voices are being ignored in favour of other politically correct perspectives.

Given the makeup of the moderators for the English language debate, you can hardly blame them. The debate airing on October 7 features five respected women journalists, including Lisa Laflamme of CTV, Rosemary Barton of CBC, Dawna Friesen of Global, Althia Raj of Huffpost and The Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt.

All of the aforementioned have the qualifications and the experience to be excellent moderators. But why should a panel on Canadian politics only include participants of one gender? I would be first to complain if the debate consortium had chosen only men. So why is it okay to repeat gender bias with a women-only line-up? Former governor-general David Johnston, the first-ever debates commissioner, is treading a fine line in decisions on the format and composition of the debates. In French, there will be a mix of genders, with three men and two women journalists.

By excluding Bernier from this politically correct table, Johnson is providing dangerous fodder to the populists.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.