The 42nd Canadian Parliament was in session from December 3, 2015, to September 11, 2019, with the membership of its lower chamber, the House of Commons of Canada, having been determined by the results of the 2015 federal election held on October 19, 2015, and thirty new appointees to its Upper House, the Senate of Canada. It was dissolved prior to the 2019 Federal Election.
There was one session of the 42nd Parliament:
SessionStartEnd1stDecember 3, 2015September 11, 2019
Overview Parliament officially resumed on December 3, 2015, with the election of a new Speaker, Geoff Regan, followed by a Speech from the Throne the following day. The Speaker of the Senate of Canada was George Furey, who was appointed Speaker of the Canadian Senate on the advice of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to replace Leo Housakos, on December 3, 2015. On September 11, 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau advised Governor General Julie Payette to dissolve Parliament and issue the writ of election, leading to a five-week election campaign period for the 2019 federal election.
Party standings
AffiliationHouse membersSenate members2015 election resultsAt dissolutionOn election day 2015At dissolution184177––999547294439––1010––13–––1–––1––––299–867–––58Total members33833383103–5222Total seats338105
Major events Significant legislation adopted during the 42nd Parliament included the Cannabis Act, the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Implementation Act, the Canada Infrastructure Bank Act, the Impact Assessment Act and Canadian Energy Regulator Acts, as well as the legalizing of medical assistance in dying and adding gender identity and expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Legislation and motions Among the more significant pieces of legislation adopted in the 42nd Parliament was Bill C-14, passed with a free vote, as the government's response to Carter v Canada; it inserted the term "medical assistance in dying" into the Criminal Code and made provisions for adult Canadians to engage in the practice. Bill C-16 added "gender identity or expression" to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the list of characteristics of identifiable groups protected from hate propaganda in the Criminal Code – with only 40 Conservative Party members, who were all granted a free vote, opposed the bill. With all party support, the Accessible Canada Act (Bill C-81) created the Canadian Accessibility Standards Development Organization and the positions of Accessibility Commissioner as a member of the Human Rights Commission and Chief Accessibility Officer as an adviser to the minister responsible for accessibility. The Cannabis Act (Bill C-45) created a legal framework that allows for recreational use of cannabis by adults. Bill C-69 repealed and replaced the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the National Energy Board Act with the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, respectively, and renamed the Navigation Protection Act to the Canadian Navigable Waters Act with new considerations for what constitutes 'navigable water'. With only the Conservative Party opposed, Bill C-55 amended the Oceans Act to require the use of the precautionary principle in establishing a marine protected areas and added the maintenance of ecological integrity as a reason for their establishment. In November 2018 Bill C-89 ended a strike action by employees of Canada Post.
In modernizing existing legislation, the Transportation Modernization Act (Bill C-49) amended the Canada Transportation Act to, among other things, implement long-haul interswitching as a permanent mechanism in the rail industry, exclude revenue from interswitching and from the movement of grain in containers on flatcars from Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway's maximum revenue entitlement; require railway companies to keep up-to-date plans for each of their railway lines and to publicly report on their abilities to move a given summer's grain crop along with a winter contingency plans, raise the foreign ownership limits for Canadian airlines from 25% to 49% of an airline's voting interest with the new rule that no single foreign investor may own more than 25%, expand the review of joint ventures in the airline industry to also include the public interest and fair competition practices; the bill also amended several other transportation-related acts including the CN Commercialization Act to increase the individual ownership limit in Canadian National Railway from 15% to 25%, and the Railway Safety Act to require the installation of locomotive voice and video recorders onto trains. Bill C-23 repealed the Preclearance Act, 1999 and replaced it with the Preclearance Act, 2016 Bill C-59 modernized national security matters by adopting four new acts titled the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency Act, the Avoiding Complicity in Mistreatment by Foreign Entities Act and the Intelligence Commissioner Act and Communications Security Establishment Act, in addition to making amendments to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and Secure Air Travel Act. Bill C-25 variously amended the Canada Business Corporations Act, Canada Cooperatives Act, and Canada Not‑for‑profit Corporations Act to, among other things, allow more online tools to be used to disseminate required information to shareholders in notice and access systems, to require certain types of corporations to disclose to shareholders the composition of their boards and senior management, as well as their diversity policies or the statement that they do not have a diversity policy. The bill also prohibited businesses from issuing bearer forms of share certificates and share warrants and modified how directors of certain corporations and cooperatives are elected: that they must be elected individually, not as a slate or a group of candidates, and reduce maximum term lengths from 3 to 1 years. Bill C-57 updated how Canada's Sustainable Development Strategy is implemented. Bill C-78 updated the Divorce Act and two other related acts, as well as brought them in line with international standards of the Child Protection Convention and Child Support Convention.
On public safety and crime, Bill C-46 inserted new provisions into the Criminal Code regarding drug–impaired driving and the ability of peace officers to use drug screening equipment and random breath testing. On animal cruelty, Bill C-84 expanded the Criminal Code's provisions against cockpits to include any "arena for animal fighting" and in response to the Supreme Court of Canada findings in R. v. D.L.W., added a definition for bestiality. Bill C-75, generally seeking to address court delays and promote fair and efficient trails but also included multiple other amendments, removed the allowance of peremptory challenge, allowed warrants to be acted upon anywhere in Canada rather than only in its originating province, added new provisions for videoconference by judges and court participants, restricted the use of preliminary inquiries to only cases involving offences punishable by life imprisonment, reclassified an additional 115 offenses as hybrid offenses so that they may be prosecuted either as summary convictions or as indictable offences, increased the maximum penalty for summary convictions to two years imprisonment, and deleted or amended offenses from the Criminal Code that the Supreme Court found to be unconstitutional (abortion in R v Morgentaler, vagrancy in R v Heywood, spreading false news in R v Zundel, anal intercourse in R v CM, and those offenses in R v Martineau). Bill C-51 repealed or modified provisions within the Criminal Code found to be unconstitutional or obsolete, including those against dueling, blasphemous libel, witchcraft, crime comics and trading stamps and, in response to R v JA, clarified that an unconscious person is unable to grant consent to sexual activity. The Expungement of Historically Unjust Convictions Act (Bill C-66) allows the Parole Board of Canada to expunge historical convictions related to gross indecency, buggery or anal intercourse. Bill C-93 created a process in the Criminal Records Act to allow individuals convicted of possession of cannabis before its legalization to request a record suspension. Partially in response to recent court decisions on solitary confinement and the recommendations of the Ashley Smith inquest, Bill C-83 replaced the system of administrative and disciplinary segregation in federal prisons with "structured intervention units". Bill C-71 amended the Firearms Act to delete the 5-year limitation on background checks, mandate that sellers verify a licence before selling a non‑restricted firearm, require sellers to maintain records of sales, require that automatic authorization to transport documents specify destinations and repeals the Governor in Council's ability to reclassify specific firearms between restricted and non-restricted. Bill C-71 also undid the provisions in the Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1 exempting the Ending the Long‑gun Registry Act from the Privacy Act, Access to Information Act and the Library and Archives of Canada Act; and allows Quebec access to the Canadian Firearms Registry Data as requested in Quebec (AG) v Canada (AG).