NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh rallied his caucus and staff at Parliament House on Tuesday to share his vision for the “courageous” campaign he plans to ultimately run, before other opposition parties launch early elections. He indicated that he was not yet ready to assist.
But as the only party still supporting the Liberal government, there will be several opportunities over the next two weeks that will test the NDP’s readiness to send Canadians to the polls early.
After a two-month stalemate, House Speaker Greg Fergus on Monday informed MPs that he would end the filibuster of a Conservative-led privilege motion on documents related to the now-defunct Green Technology Fund. . A high-stakes vote could take place before the holidays.
Mr Fergus said the current months-long debate, which has prevented progress on most other issues in the House of Commons, could be temporarily put on the back burner and the remaining “supply” days, opposition days and supplementary estimates could be ignored. The decision was made.
“Although a privilege motion must take precedence over all other orders of the day, this practice is still not absolute,” Fergus said. “Standing orders require the House to address supply issues by December 10.”
The Chairman ordered that Thursday and Friday of this week, and Monday and Tuesday of next week, be allotted as days of opposition.
Thursday will be Opposition Day for the Conservative Party, which today confirmed it will introduce a motion of no confidence citing Singh’s past criticism of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government.
“Meanwhile, the New Democratic Party leader said he had “abandoned” the supply and confidence agreement with the Liberal government, while the NDP leader said “the Liberal party is too weak and too selfish to fight for the people.” and is so indifferent to corporate interests,”’ the motion reads in part.
Asked on Tuesday afternoon how his caucus would vote on the motion, which calls for the House of Commons to declare that it has “lost confidence in the prime minister and the government,” Mr Singh said: “We will play the Pierre Poièvre game.” He said he didn’t mean to, but he didn’t actually do it. We went this far to see how his party would vote in the upcoming vote of confidence opportunity.
The NDP will vote on Friday’s opposition day, but Singh has already said his party will not use the day to move forward with a vote of confidence.
Both Thursday and Friday’s Opposition Day motions are expected to be voted on next Monday.
The Conservative Party today confirmed that it intends to use all three remaining days of opposition to seek to topple the minority Liberal government and trigger an early election.
“Now that even the Liberal Party chair has ruled that Justin Trudeau’s nine years of failure should be open to opposition debate, common-sense Conservatives have tabled three motions of confidence, starting this week. It will be debated and voted on,” said Andrew Scheer, Conservative leader of the House of Commons. In a statement.
The decision came after Conservative MPs refused to give unanimous consent to Opposition Day’s motion of no confidence citing Mr Singh, which was due to be debated yesterday, in the House of Commons of the Government House of Commons. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications described the move as “very weak.”
“But you know, that’s where we are,” Gould said.
After the Liberals defeated the Bloc Quebecois’ ultimatum, Leader Yves-François Blanchet said he was ready to join the Conservatives in passing a motion of no confidence in the Liberals if given the chance.
The European Union sided with the Conservatives last week, voting against the federal government’s five-page bill that would enact Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promised two-month tax cut on various consumer goods over the holiday period.
The Liberals welcomed the speaker’s decision after initially unsuccessfully trying to speed up the remaining opposition period using a similar procedural mechanism seen with last week’s GST bill.
“We’re going to get this job done, despite all the ridiculous pretending that the Conservative Party is playing to actually try to block the important work that our MPs are doing on behalf of Canadians,” Gould said. said.
The Speaker’s intervention comes as Finance Chair Anita Anand’s supplementary estimates – which require MPs’ approval to channel billions of dollars in additional spending to specific sectors – face a flurry of confidence tests in the coming days. It also means that there is a possibility of a US-style shutdown.
As of next Tuesday, there are only five days left in the House of Commons’ scheduled sittings before lawmakers take a break until the new year.
Gould said Tuesday that he was “talking” with his opponents about all possible ways forward, but unless there is significant progress or an early agreement is reached to postpone, the filibuster on privileged debates will resume in the remaining days. It is expected that
