When the morning sun began peeking into the House of Commons early Thursday morning, hundreds of MPs were in the chamber, rising from and settling back into their green armchairs, voting on the Conservatives' contentious omnibus budget bill.
They were at the tail end of their first overnight in the Commons for a marathon, around-the-clock voting session expected to stretch into the early hours of Friday morning.
The votes are on hundreds of amendments opposition MPs have proposed to Bill C-38, the government's sweeping budget bill that proposes changes to Employment Insurance, Old Age Security, the Fisheries Act, environmental regulations, the country's immigration regime, and dozens of other laws.
Voting got under way just before 1 a.m. in Ottawa Thursday morning, with New Democrats rising slowly, one by one, effectively drawing out the already long process.
The process will go on until the more-than 800 amendments, grouped into 159 packages to be voted, are all carried or lost.
As of Thursday morning, not one amendment had passed -- and given the Conservative majority, that trend is expected to continue. But as much as the NDP, Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and Greens would like to see some changes in the bill, the voting has become a form of protest, delaying the passage of the bill -- a massive piece of legislation they say is an affront to democracy and an abuse of Parliament.
With MPs engaged in voting, and limited to moving between the chamber and the lobbies located immediately behind the benches, all other House business is on hold -- so no other debates and no committee meetings.
Over on the Senate side, however, the national finance committee continues studying the budget bill in anticipation of its arrival in the Upper Chamber, hearing today from representatives of the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Canadian Medical Association.
The environment and natural resources committee, which has also been pre-studying the budget bill, will be behind closed doors, planning its next steps.
That's all for now.
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