OTTAWA - Conservatives and Liberals have agreed to quickly clear the legislative decks in the Senate, committing to vote Friday on a host of bills, including the federal budget.
In return for the speedy budget vote, the Tories agreed Thursday to vote on a controversial Liberal private member's bill ordering the government to meet the Kyoto targets for greenhouse-gas emission reductions.
The Tories have long contended the targets are unachievable without destroying the economy and, until recently, had been filibustering the bill to prevent it coming to a vote in the Liberal-dominated Senate.
Under a motion passed Thursday, all bills that have reached third and final reading will go to a vote by noon Friday and then be given royal assent.
Third reading debate on the budget implementation bill began moments later, after the Senate finance committee reported the bill back to the upper chamber without amendment.
Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has said the unelected upper chamber should not defeat or try to change a budget adopted by the elected House of Commons. While most Liberal senators are likely to support the bill, those from the Atlantic provinces and Saskatchewan made it clear they won't fall in line.
Indeed, Bill Rompkey, a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador and the Liberals' lead critic on the bill, expressed hope that the budget will be defeated outright.
He denounced the government for forcing Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to choose between the new enriched equalization program or the old program and their offshore accords. The accords shield the two provinces' offshore resource revenues from equalization clawbacks.
Rompkey said the budget effectively abrogates the accords, thereby robbing the two provinces of the full benefit of their offshore resources and keeping them stuck as have-not provinces.
"We want to become a contributor to Canada and that's why this pernicious budget has to be amended and I would hope we could defeat it.''
Rompkey, along with other Atlantic Liberals, intend to support an amendment proposed by fellow Newfoundlander, George Baker. Baker's amendment is aimed at ensuring Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are entitled to the newly enriched equalization program without losing the benefit of their accords.
The amendment is likely to gain support from at least two senators who still sit as Progressive Conservatives even though that party has been absorbed into the Conservatives -- Nova Scotia's Lowell Murray and Alberta's Elaine McCoy. McCoy likened the budget's impact on the resource wealth of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan to the National Energy Program, which Alberta blames for syphoning off much of its oil wealth in the early 1980s.
But Tory Senator David Angus countered that the budget is fair, generous and balanced. And he argued that any change to mollify Saskatchewan and the two Atlantic provinces would provoke a backlash, since it would mean allowing the three provinces to receive enriched equalization payments even if their fiscal capacity exceeds that of Ontario, the only province never to have received equalization.
"Every other province would lose their benefits under the budget and it would lead to chaos,'' Angus said.
Wilfred Moore, a Liberal senator from Nova Scotia, proposed another amendment that, if passed, would surely send Ontario over the edge. He wants to return to the old system of distributing social and health transfers to the provinces so that have-not provinces get a disproportionate share.
The budget's move to strict per capita distribution of such funds was a crucial condition for winning Ontario's support for any enrichment of equalization.
Angus urged the Senate to defeat all amendments, arguing: "It's not for us here in the unelected Senate to amend, block or otherwise tinker with the government's budget."
