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OTTAWA — The Liberals are torn. They’d like to live up to their own lofty rhetoric about building a shining beacon on Parliament Hill.

But they’d prefer not to be constrained in any way by the inconvenient logistics of Parliament.

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The government’s latest attempt to circumvent the scrutiny of the House of Commons is a streamlining of the budgetary process that would limit Parliament to vote just once on all the spending measures in the recent budget.

It’s the budgetary equivalent of the kind of omnibus bill the Liberals said they would never introduce.

The vote would give Treasury Board president Scott Brison unprecedented discretion over $7 billion, on the promise that the House will be informed about all the messy details at a later date.

Brison has promised to overhaul the estimates process to align it with the federal budget, with the aim of speeding up spending approvals and improving scrutiny.