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“It appears to me that the Opposition is simply looking to delay our important job creating measures,” said Van Loan said.

“It’s a foolish thing to do at a time when these are important economic measures and the global economy is facing very fragile circumstances.”

To what extent the amendments will bog down the Commons is in the hands of Speaker Andrew Scheer.

Scheer, a Tory MP, has at his disposal a power granted in 2001.

That year, the governing Liberals invested the Speaker with the authority to refuse to allow votes on motions he deemed of a “repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings.”

The introduction of that rule followed a series of contentious debates in the Commons that saw Opposition parties introduce thousands of amendments to legislation like the Young Offenders Act and the Nisga’a land claims treaty.

That piece of legislation was stalled by the precursor to today’s Conservatives, the Reform Party, which introduced hundreds of amendments, some as simple as requesting changes to punctuation.

So Scheer now has the ability to merely toss some or all of the amendments out. He could also bundle them together for votes.

The ruling on the amendments will set the stage for the week ahead.

“We’ll wait to see how that gets interpreted and we’ll move forward from there,” Van Loan said.

The Opposition parties say the government’s assertion that they are merely playing political games with the amendments is untrue.

“What we are defending are the democratic principles of Parliament that says the job of each and every MP, everyone, Conservatives included, is to hold that government to account and to understand what the impacts of each of these things will be,” NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen told Global TV’s West Block on Sunday.

“And a bill so massive, and absolutely so far reaching —there is nobody in that House that can understand each of those impacts and our job is to show that to Canadians.”

The Canadian Press