By the time the curtain dropped on the spring parliamentary sitting, it had become conventional wisdom amongst certain circles of Hill punditerati.

Despite a campaign pledge to treat the House with more respect than his predecessor, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had clearly come to despise the daily ordeal of submitting to interrogation by the opposition – why else, went the logic, would he be trying to cut down his appearances to once a week?

In fact, he was actively plotting out ways to deprive his adversaries across the aisle of the procedural tools that had been used since Confederation to force governments to slow their roll, not to mention privately ruing the day he voluntarily gave up control of the Senate.

Whether or not that particular theory will bear out remains to be seen.

But during a wide-ranging conversation with iPolitics – which was conducted while walking along the upper level encircling the chamber itself, at the suggestion of Trudeau’s office – he gave a pretty good impression of a prime minister who legitimately enjoys the cut and thrust of Commons debate, albeit one who can also be frustrated by what he sees as actively counterproductive opposition antics.

“Obviously, that’s silly – it’s totally false,” he fires back when asked, point blank, if he hates the House and its accompanying House duties.

“I believe deeply in this place, I always have, and I believe deeply in the partisanship that is at the centre of this place. If we’re going to pass the best possible legislation, we need to have folks who are going to be responsible for poking holes in it, and pointing out how it could be better.”

That “give and take,” he says, “is both fundamentally reassuring to Canadians, to see their government being held so directly to account but it’s also really important that in our creating of legislation we’re thinking about how to be as effective as we can.”

He does, at least, seem entirely at home strolling through the galleries overlooking the chamber – but then, that’s not surprising, considering his origin story – and yes, he recalls watching his father from those same spectator seats as a child.

“Sitting right across from my dad, I remember watching him take the first few questions, and [being] disappointed because all the other questions were for finance minister [Marc] Lalonde.”

That wasn’t the spark for the weekly prime minister-focused question period that he would eventually champion when he took over that front bench seat, he says – “but it all fits in – this idea that the PM would only take questions from party leaders.”

Fundamentally, he just likes the idea that every member in the House should have the opportunity – or, at least, the possibility of the opportunity – to question the prime minister.

“It’s more like a town hall for me.”

In fact, he says, that’s how he’s been approaching his now weekly foray into Westminster-style Prime Minister’s Question Time.

“[I] go in much more with the ‘town hall’ mindset, rather than a question period mindset, and not fight for ‘The Clip’ as much, but actually talk to Canadians about what we’ve done, why we’re doing it, and what we’re doing.”

Over the last few months, one particular government initiative that he found himself explaining – and re-explaining, and defending, and eventually abandoning, at least for the moment – was the now-aborted push to “modernize” the House of Commons standing orders by imposing new limits on legislative debate through ‘programming’ – another British import that would have, in effect, set up a system of automatic time allocation – as well as restricting the ability of the opposition to logjam the parliamentary process through dilatory motions and other delaying tactics.

The move – which played out both at the House affairs committee, where it triggered a month-long rolling filibuster, as well as in the main chamber where it even briefly pre-empted Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s budget speech – proved so radioactive to cross-aisle relations that the government ultimately dropped the most controversial provisions in favour of a much more modest suite of reforms that included only those proposals explicitly included in the party’s 2015 campaign platform.

In hindsight, the reaction from the other side was “a little predictable, but still frustrating,” he admits.

“I spent the vast majority of my career on opposition back benches. I know how important it is that we have the right tools to get things done,” he notes.

“I also know that governments get mandates to deliver things for Canadians, and a part of the process needs to be the opposition being empowered to poke holes, to give speeches, to push back, and to make sure that it moves forward appropriately, or not at all, and that’s a really important dynamic.”

And since “good work gets done at committees,” and the natural place for that conversation was at PROC [the procedure and House affairs committee], the government put forward its now notorious ‘discussion paper,’ with the hope of kickstarting that discussion.

“The problem is there is a skepticism where the opposition says, ‘Well you have a majority so you’re just going to ram through whatever you like,’ even though on electoral reform and on things like this, we’ve demonstrated that no, we’re not going to ram through whatever we like, we’re going to work with you guys, we’re going to listen, we’re going to hear feedback, and we’re going to try and move forward responsibly.”

But while he’s sympathetic to constructive criticism from the opposition side, he admits that he has “less patience” for obstructionist tactics – or, as he puts it, the ‘Let’s filibuster for hours because we don’t trust you to even be reasonable’ strategy.

“I think we’ve done a decent job of showing we can be reasonable on a whole bunch of different things, and we will always try and be respectful of this place, and the traditions of being part of something that will last way beyond anyone who currently sits here, or any government that sits here.”

That doesn’t mean he’s given up on his quest to update the House rulebook to reflect more 21st century values like work-life balance, which he sees as particularly critical for MPs with young families – which is why he’s nowhere close to giving up his campaign to replace the old-school standing vote with a more efficient process.

“It consumes so much time and energy that could be spent… should be spent either in debating ideas, or with our families in the evening or with constituencies. Is there a way to move forward that will give the same results of being able to be accountable to our constituents for the ways we vote, but not having to take … a couple of hours to get through a dozen votes?”

He’s also unmoved by the argument that simply watching how their colleagues vote can cause an MP to change his or her mind at the last minute, which, he notes, can present logistical challenges for a governing party that tries to take a less high-control approach to voting discipline.

“One of the things that you’ve noticed that we have, we have much freer votes on our side and that’s great,” he notes.

“But one of the things that we are sort of struggling with, and we’ve talked about … we can have free votes but we have to have a clear idea of the numbers going in. And quite frankly, we have people saying, ‘Look, I want to vote against it but not if it’s actually going to pass, or if I’m going to swing the balance,’ so we need to know, so we’re actually trying to dissuade people from making a decision at the last minute.”

If someone is going to vote against their party, “they should have compelling enough reasons that they should be able to come and tell us in advance, ‘I’m going to do this. You can’t dissuade me from it,’ and we’ll say okay, but ‘I’m going to vote because Bob beside me said, ‘No, no, no, this isn’t a good thing?”

He’s also not a fan of the tactic of trying to “politicize” a particular vote by filling the galleries with interest groups, “or bring a widow or a grieving daughter … into the House,” which he sees as a kind of pressure that “isn’t necessarily a good thing in politics.”

He does, however, admit that, “back when we were in opposition, where we weren’t as organized,” he would sometimes find himself thinking, ‘Wait, is Irwin Cotler voting that way? Okay, then, I’ll vote that way too,” but maintains that doing so “takes a little bit of the seriousness of voting out of it.”

He’s also not adverse to the idea of clocking in a few hours of non-prime time in the House on occasion – like, for instance, just last week, when he decided to drop in during a pre-recess late-night sitting.

“I had a blast,” he says. “I landed from an event in Montreal at 9:30, which meant the kids were asleep and Sophie was just about to get into bed. So I said, you know what, I’m going to come to the House because it’s still sitting.”

When he walked in, he says, “the Conservatives panicked, and everyone sort of clumped around me, and I was like, ‘Guys, you don’t need to be in the camera shot! There is no camera shot.’”

Eventually, he says, “I got up to sit in different places, to chat with some of the folks … it was great.”

He has fond memories of a similar late-night sitting a few years ago to deal with amendments put forward by Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

“It was a real team-building experience,” he says. “This place is magic when it comes to life … what it’ll do, when you get speeches like Arnold Chan.”

During his early days as an MP, he says, “I’d walk in, and talk about youth service or whatever, and I’d have no notes and I’d actually give a speech, and people would actually listen. As soon as you pick up notes people go back to their writing. That sort of interplay, I think… this place matters. It needs to continue to matter.”

Which brings us, finally, to the Other Place – the Senate, specifically, which has also taken to mattering of late – most recently in the days leading up to the summer recess, when it seemed poised to pick a constitutional fight with the Commons over its right to amend budget legislation.

“Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, it’s not working,’ … but there’s a block of 35 or so Conservatives who will vote against everything we have. When you actually look at the rest of the independents and the former Liberals …. it’s constructive, it’s productive. It’s working reasonably well, and it will only get working better.”

He points to his government’s bid to roll back controversial changes to the citizenship and immigration rules brought in by the previous administration as a “great example” of the Senate “significantly improving” legislation sent over by the House.

“We accepted the amendments, and we got better public policy for Canadians because of the work the Senate did.”

These negotiations between the two chambers “don’t have to be a crisis,” he says.

“I remember saying, early on, ‘Look, we’re going to do more free votes, and there will be stories written about the Liberal caucus, and has Trudeau lost control? But people will eventually learn that, no, this is part of reflecting the diversity of Canada.’”

He agrees that the Senate has a challenge function, which, in his view, means that it is “perfectly legitimate” for senators to suggest an amendment.

“But I want it to be very clear that, around a budget bill, I don’t think we’re going to be accepting those. Certainly not as a matter of course – it would have to be a particular circumstance for us to be willing to accept that the Senate would have influence over something that is very much the House domain.”

And when Parliament returns this fall, those same senators may be able to quiz him on those parameters directly, as he says he’s “open” to taking part in the weekly Senate ministerial question period.

“I’m not opposed to it,” he says.

“We just have to find the right occasion, or the right way to do it, and make sure it’s done in a useful way for us.”