As MPs go on summer break, some highlights of the Trudeau government’s first 7 months

[Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a news conference in Ottawa, on June 22, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Wattie]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrapped up his first seven months in office Wednesday by pointing to Liberal efforts to change Canada’s taxes, child benefits and pensions.

Calling them “significant promises kept,” the prime minister tried to persuade Canadians of their importance against a barrage of media questions concerning everything from the F-35 to the upcoming North American Leaders’ Summit and the impending Brexit vote.

Save for that summit, parliamentarians head for the exits this month while pundits try to assess the winter and spring parliamentary period.

Here’s how Yahoo Canada News saw some of the highlights:

‘Elbowgate’ and assisted dying

By far the most dramatic piece of legislation since the Liberals took power was the government’s move to legalize assisted dying in Canada.

Bill C-14 was a pressure-cooker situation from the start. When the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a long-time ban on doctor-assisted suicide in February 2015, saying it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the court gave the government a year to come up with a new solution.

But Parliament dissolved in August last year for the election and didn’t return until December with a new party in power under Trudeau. The Liberals sought a six-month extension to the deadline, but the court only granted one for four months. That set the clock ticking and soon, tempers flaring on an emotionally-charged and divisive issue.

When the government introduced their bill in mid-April, making international news, it went beyond the scope of the court’s ruling: the bill allowed assisted death only for terminal illness, rather than all those suffering intolerable and incurable illnesses.

The Opposition and several experts said the bill was unconstitutional, while the Liberals defended it as striking a balance between protecting the vulnerable and upholding rights.

Something had to give — and on May 18, it did. On a day when the government and Opposition were using procedural tactics against each other, Trudeau had had it. He got up from his seat in the House of Commons and grabbed Conservative MP Gord Brown, pulling him to his seat. In the process he — accidentally or not — elbowed NDP MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau in the chest.

The House went bonkers, and the whole affair quickly became known as “elbowgate.” Trudeau was accused of “manhandling.” He apologized, then apologized again and then apologized a third time. He became subject to a committee investigation, which eventually cleared him.

Even then, with the government having missed the June 6 deadline, it faced another obstacle when the bill reached the Senate. The upper house passed an amendment to effectively include those not necessarily facing death. The House rejected the amendment, and for a while it looked like there would be an endless ping-pong match. But the Senate backed down on the second try, yielding to the House version and leading to the end of the saga.

At least for now. One senator hopes the provinces will challenge the constitutionality of the bill in the courts. We may not have seen the end of this story.

‘O Canada’ and Bélanger

A second dramatic and consequential piece of legislation was a private member’s bill that will change Canada’s national anthem.

Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger’s Bill C-210 will make O Canada gender neutral by amending the National Anthem Act to replace the line “in all thy sons command” with “in all of us command.”

The Opposition Conservatives have been against this change, saying it was a slippery slope to changing many elements of Canada’s national heritage.

Bélanger, however, has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and his condition has worsened rapidly as the months passed by. He lost the use of his voice, requiring text-to-speech software, and then steadily lost control of his body, needing a walker and then a breathing tube. His colleagues openly wondered how long he will live, and have been concerned he would die before the bill became law.

While respecting Bélanger’s condition, the Tories said their opposition to the bill was not about him. In one emotional moment, they ran out the clock before the bill could be sent to committee, meaning the bill would have been punted to the fall.

But Liberal MP Linda Lapointe swapped positions with Bélanger, allowing him to take her spot, and allowing the bill to eventually clear the House. It’s now making its way through the Senate and is expected to pass when Parliament resumes in September.

RCMP and Air Canada

Similar to the assisted suicide bill, the government faced another Supreme Court ruling demanding a new solution, this one allowing the RCMP to have bargaining rights.

Again, similar to assisted suicide, the government missed the deadline for Bill C-7, and the pressure was cranked up. One of the problems critics had with the bill was that it excluded several issues from union talks.

The House amended the bill in committee and now the Senate has amended the bill too, and has sent it back to the House. The government says it will consider it once it returns from summer break.

Another big bill sitting in the Senate is C-10, which changes the Air Canada Public Participation Act, a piece of Canadian law that requires airlines to have major maintenance work done in Winnipeg and Montreal.

When an Air Canada subsidiary that had employed hundreds of people in Winnipeg went bankrupt, Air Canada hired non-Canadian companies, but the two provinces sued and won.

The bill is the Liberals’ effort to reconcile the situation, but has still not become law, and now the airline is threatening to cancel investment plans if the Senate doesn’t move.

Tax cuts, child benefits and pensions

Meanwhile, Trudeau himself spoke of his government’s top legislative accomplishments this winter and spring differently.

The prime minister appeared in front of the press on Wednesday to outline three items, all budgetary, as the most “significant promises” he’s kept. He said the three “show that our government is serious about delivering the kind of real change Canadians want.”

The first, he said, was the Liberals’ “middle-class tax cut,” which also raised taxes on the rich. The party accomplished this through a ways and means motion passed back at the end of 2015, as one of the first moves of the nascent government. It dropped the tax rate for the second income bracket and created a new bracket above $200,000.

The second was the Canada Child Benefit. His government’s spring federal budget changed tax breaks for families with young kids by rolling up the Canada Child Tax Benefit, National Child Benefit and Universal Child Care Benefit into a new single program, ultimately paying out more for young kids for families with low incomes.

Finally, Trudeau pointed to changes his government is proposing to the Canada Pension Plan. This is a recent victory by Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who announced Monday he had reached an “agreement in principle” with premiers to begin “phasing-in” changes to the CPP Jan. 1, 2019.

Among other changes, it would boost payouts to account for one third, instead of one quarter, of pensionable earnings.

The Opposition view

For their part, the two main Opposition parties focused on several topics outside government legislation in their summaries of the seven-month period.

The Conservatives, for example, on Wednesday accused the government, among other things, of “cozying up to Russia.” They pointed to a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin that suggested he and Trudeau discussed re-establishing relations “in full.”

“We must stand firm against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. We must protect our Arctic sovereignty against Russian imperialism,” a Conservative statement reads.

Trudeau, who has announced he will visit Ukraine July 11-12, was asked about the Putin issue on Wednesday. He said he made a commitment to “re-engage Canada in the world in positive ways,” including “cautiously re-engaging with people we disagree with.”

That being said, the Liberal government has “real concerns about Russia and about its actions, and we will be thoughtful and firm, as I have always been on how we re-engage with Russia,” Trudeau added.

A day earlier, the NDP had brought up, among other things, the issue of the Liberals’ campaign promise to “immediately launch a national public inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada.”

“We have been surprised that, eight months later, there have been no announcements made on this front,” NDP MP Peter Julian said Tuesday. “We want this to be addressed as soon as is possible.”

The government says Indigenous Minister Carolyn Bennett has met with her provincial counterparts and indigenous leaders to discuss how to move forward on a number of issues.

On June 10, the group reached "agreement to move forward on a number of areas for collaboration,” including “co-operation” toward the national inquiry, the government said.

Trudeau was also asked about the issue on Wednesday, and said he hoped the inquiry would “set a path forward to end this ongoing national tragedy.”