OTTAWA - For a place that Prime Minister Stephen Harper claims is on the brink of anarchy, Parliament has been a busy little beehive since the current session began a year ago this fall.
Notwithstanding some periodic theatrics over alleged Conservative ethical lapses, MPs from all four parties have often put partisanship aside to produce results when required.
By June, no fewer than 29 bills had received royal assent and become law since the session started in October.
And despite the fireworks at three politically charged committees, two dozen others have been quietly labouring away for months on a range of bills and hot topics, from the seal harvest to climate change.
In the final week alone before the summer recess, MPs tabled nine committee reports, sped through a series of last-minute votes, approved $335,000 worth of finance committee travel and unanimously rushed through a bill reforming military courts martial.
Nevertheless, the prime minister labelled Parliament "dysfunctional" last week, maintained the committee system was "in chaos" and warned he would "have to make a judgment in the next little while" on whether it's worth going on.
The remarks were widely seen as a signal a fall election may be in the offing. But opposition critics say legislative gridlock can't be used as an excuse for an autumn campaign.
"I don't accept that Parliament is dysfunctional at all," says NDP MP Pat Martin.
"Most committees are functioning well, and the government is advancing its agenda, subject to some of the compromises you'd expect in a minority Parliament."
It seems Harper's real beef is with the problems his government has faced on a set of unique committees chaired by opposition MPs.
Harper was also infuriated when, on two of the remaining 21 standing committees, the opposition attempted to displace routine legislative agendas with ethical controversies.
Those confrontations have consumed only a small fraction of parliamentary business, but they've eaten up most of the headlines from Ottawa.
It began soon after Parliament resumed last October.
The opposition majority on a Commons rules panel - the procedure and House affairs committee - attempted to mount an inquiry into allegations of rule-breaking in $1.3 million worth of Conservative election ads.
The committee quickly ground to a halt, tempers rose and Tory MPs countered with the unprecedented spectacle of a government filibuster.
Early last March, the opposition voted out Conservative chair Gary Goodyear, using its majority to elect a new government chair, Joe Preston, over his own objections.
Preston unwillingly took the gavel, banged it down and adjourned the meeting. He refused to call another one and soon resigned. The government refused to nominate any chair other than Goodyear, the opposition wouldn't accept him, and the committee hasn't met since then.
A similar standoff developed in the justice committee, where the opposition insisted on holding an inquiry into allegations that Conservatives offered the late independent MP Chuck Cadman financial inducements to help defeat the Liberal minority government in 2005.
The confrontation began in March and, like the deadlock in the House affairs committee, disabled the justice panel until the June adjournment.
Tory chair Art Hanger's solution was a simple one. He left the chair any time the Liberals tried to press a motion on the Cadman affair.
In the government operations committee, also chaired by the opposition, MPs held a brief inquiry into allegations that one of Harper's aides had intervened in a contract dispute between a Montreal firm and the Public Works Department. The committee also grilled Environment Minister John Baird over allegations he interfered in a City of Ottawa election by withholding federal aid for a light-rail project.
Shortly before the Commons broke for the summer, the opposition was attempting to steer the panel toward another controversy - the disclosure that former foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier had left classified NATO briefing documents at a girlfriend's Montreal home.
With that inquiry facing the Tories in September, and the ethics committee set to resume its own inquiry into Conservative election advertising, the motives behind Harper's sweeping statement about parliamentary paralysis may be understandable.
In the meantime, though, MPs on the finance committee are set to conduct hearings in the Prairie provinces and B.C. for a fourth Conservative budget.
And government and opposition MPs are planning to board the same plane to Belgium when they resume an inquiry into the seal harvest's fate.
It will be business as usual, including the fireworks.
