Article content

OTTAWA — The death knell for Rona Ambrose’s sexual assault bill came on Wednesday, when senators from her own Conservative Party blocked a last-ditch effort by a former superior court judge to see it passed after two years in the upper chamber.

According to Sen. Pierre Dalphond, who joined the Senate in 2018 from the Quebec Court of Appeal bench, there’s nothing more to do about the former interim Conservative leader’s Bill C-337, which would have required judges to complete courses on sexual assault law, with annual reports to Parliament from the Canadian Judicial Council. The House of Commons had passed it unanimously in 2017.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Dozens of bills, including on sexual assault and UNDRIP, die in Senate amid Conservative filibuster Back to video

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick / Canadian Press

It and dozens of other private bills — including Bill C-262, which sought to put Canadian laws in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — will die on the order paper as the Senate wraps up its business this week before summer.

The apparent strategy by Conservative senators to prevent the passage of NDP MP Romeo Saganash’s UNDRIP bill, which Tories had also voted against in the House, has left the Senate unable to deal with a long list of bills proposed by individual MPs and senators, including one from the Senate one that would modernize the governance of the Girl Guides of Canada, and one from the House that would establish a “National Local Food Day.”