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The opposition parties gave warning last year that they would not accept unilateral changes to House procedure when they resisted Motion 6, the catalyst to the War of Trudeau’s Elbow.

With the standing orders power-grab, the Liberals succeeded in giving strange bedfellows a sense of common cause. The Conservatives and NDP used every parliamentary trick in the book to filibuster a government agenda that the newly emboldened Senate had already reduced to a crawl.

The government was forced to climb down in April, removing the most egregious of the changes, while insisting that those contained in its election platform remained sacrosanct — namely, an end to politically motivated prorogations; limitations on omnibus bills; an attempt to make sure the Estimates are a reflection of the budget; a ban on parliamentary secretaries voting on committees; and a Prime Minister’s Question Period.

The opposition, sensing the government had overextended itself, continued to pound away, threatening 30 hours of votes in the dying days of the parliamentary session unless they got satisfaction.

Late Thursday, they did — the agreed amendments to the standing orders were released, and they are as thin as mist.

Notably, the promised Prime Minister’s Question Period is nowhere to be found.

Mark Kennedy, director of communications to the government House leader, said in the U.K. the practise is merely a convention and the same will now apply here. “Prime Minister’s Question Period is here to stay under this government,” he said.