Parliament headed for showdown, possible election, Wednesday over Conservative motion
OTTAWA — The Liberals face a high-stakes game of chicken Wednesday, as they stare down the opposition parties over a confidence motion that could force the country into an election as the second wave of a pandemic rages.
The Conservatives fired the first shot Tuesday, moving ahead with their proposal to create a new committee designed to look into the WE Charity scandal, and other allegations of inappropriate lobbying and spending.
It is set to come to a vote Wednesday afternoon after Question Period. The Liberals took the rare move of making that motion a confidence issue, making clear if the Conservatives pass the motion through Parliament, the country will be headed to the polls.
Liberal House Leader Pablo Rodriguez said the motion is partisan and will hinder the government’s ability to respond to the pandemic.
“Erin O’Toole and the Conservative Party don’t care,” he charged. “They’ve turned their backs on Canadians. They don’t care about working together to find solutions to the many challenges in this crisis.”
But Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole claimed the Liberals were trying to avoid scrutiny of controversial deals.
“In many parts of Canada kids can’t go trick-or-treating but the Liberals think Canadians should go to the polls rather than their answering several simple questions,” he said.
“They don’t want the truth to come out.”
The proposed committee would have the ability to call ministers, including the prime minister as they see fit and summon documents. It would be structured differently than other committees with a clear majority of opposition party members and it would be chaired by an opposition MP, rather than someone from the government.
Such opposition day motions are not typically confidence matters, but Rodriguez said the very nature of the committee suggests that if it was passed then the House of Commons would have lost confidence in the government.
“They’re saying that the government is corrupt. That means they don’t have confidence in the government.”
O’Toole rejected the suggestion that creating a new committee could possibly be a confidence vote.
He offered amendments to his own motion to change the name of the committee, which was initially called the “anti-corruption committee” and he offered a specific amendment that made clear there was no need if the motion passed to call an election.
“I think Canadians see what’s going on here,” he said. “The Liberal Party would rather send people to the polls during the second wave of a pandemic, then answer a few reasonable questions and Canadians should be concerned by that.”
Rodriguez said the Conservatives can’t have it both ways. He said they also can’t simply change the name of the committee and pretend this isn’t an issue of confidence.
“If you write a book about Frankenstein and you call it Cinderella, it’s still a book about Frankenstein.”
COVID-19 case numbers are continuing to rise and the country reached over 200,000 cases Tuesday and was nearing 10,000 deaths.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said no one wants the election, but said the Conservatives are clearly expressing they have lost confidence in the government.
“We hope that opposition parties will decide that they want to make Parliament continue to work for Canadians and not side with the Conservatives, who’ve decided that they no longer have confidence in this government.”
O’Toole was joined by Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet who loudly proclaimed in the House of Commons that he had lost confidence in the government.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is the Liberals only potential partner and he was evasive Tuesday on how his party will vote.
While he declined to be specific on how his party will vote, he said if an election comes of this motion it will be the prime minister’s fault.
“The only way there is an election right now is because the prime minister chooses to have one. If he wants to then he should just come out and say, ‘I want an election’.”
Singh said the Liberals seem to want an election, but he is focused on the issues in front of him.
“The prime minister is looking for an excuse to go to an election, and I will not give the prime minister an excuse to go to an election,” he said. “I will not be any part of this farce. As this prime minister is suggesting that this is what’s important.”
If the NDP joins the Liberals in voting against the Conservative motion, it will fail. But the NDP could also abstain and give the Liberals a majority against the Conservatives and the Bloc.
With files from Brian Platt
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