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The Governor General can refuse Royal Assent without causing a crisis, as long as it's a decision taken "in council", which essentially means as advised by the

• skissane 3y ago
  > but it's happened when technical problems were found in legislation after it had been passed by Parliament but before going to the GG, so giving time to pass amended legislation. At least in Australia (don’t know how they do things in Canada), it is standard practice nowadays to put a clause in all Acts saying the Act enters into force on a date to be proclaimed by the GG. So, in the event that an Act is found to be unworkable after passage by Parliament, it isn’t necessary for the GG to refuse/withhold/reserve assent. Instead, the GG assents to it, and it goes on the statute book. But the ministers never advise the GG to issue a proclamation setting an entry into force date, so it never enters into force - like if you commit code guarded by a feature flag, release that code to production, but then decide to never turn the feature flag on so it never actually runs. Parliament can then pass an amending Act fixing the flaws, and the GG can proclaim an entry into force date after assenting to the amending Act. It has happened before that Parliament passes some controversial Act, GG assents to it, Cabinet decides to hold off entry into force pending some review, Cabinet decides to drop the whole idea, Parliament passes a repeal Act, GG assents to that, Act was enacted then repealed without ever entering into force-like merging a PR to remove code for a feature for which the feature flag was never enabled in production. An entry-into-force proclamation isn’t quite like a feature flag though, in that you can choose when and if to turn it on, but once you turn it on there is no way to turn it back off. It can however be selective - you can make different sections of the Act enter into force at different times, and some sections may never be brought into force at all
  • caf 3y ago
    The Federal bill I was most recently looking at didn't require a separate proclamation to enter into force - there were three commencement provisions, two based on the date of royal assent and one a fixed date: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22legislation/bills/r6876_aspassed/0000%22 https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
    • skissane 3y ago
      That’s a tax law-tax law is a bit different. In tax law, it is considered important to have clear start dates decided by Parliament - because both taxpayers and the tax office need certainty, and the budget depends on revenue projections which depend on a clear start date for each tax law change. So yes, tax law is an area in which the government is most likely to advise the GG to not assent if serious technical drafting errors are only discovered after passage by Parliament. In other areas of law, where certainty on start dates is less crucial, setting a start date by proclamation is much more common