MPs finally left the House of Commons late Friday night after voting for more than 24 hours straight, fulfilling a Conservative promise to stall the Liberal government’s legislation with an avalanche of votes unless it agrees to scrap parts of its carbon tax.
The Tories forced delays by prompting 135 votes in the House, most of them on the government’s budgetary estimates. The result was round-the-clock voting that began Thursday evening and went late into Friday night.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke before the final vote, which ended just after 11:30 p.m. ET.
“For the past 30 hours, parliamentarians from every corner of this country have been standing and voting and engaged in this House, representing their constituents, focused on implementing their vision for the future of this country,” Trudeau said.
In response, Conservative MP Rick Perkins said he would like “to remind Canadians that the Liberals and NDP just voted 134 times to increase the cost of everything.”
NDP House Leader Peter Julian thanked parliamentary staff for their hard work, prompting a standing ovation from MPs from all parties.
As proceedings moved into Friday evening, Deputy Speaker Chris d’Entremont hinted at how MPs were holding up when he struggled to remember the name of an individual member’s riding.
“The honourable member for …,” d’Entremont began, waving his hands as he tried to remember the riding name.
“It’s been a long day.”
According to Parliamentary rules, the calendar day doesn’t change until the House officially adjourns. Because MPs sat overnight, the House still considered it a Thursday session — even though the voting took up most of what the rest of the world considered Friday.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre rises to vote on a motion during a session that went through the night in the House of Commons. The House calendar is still marked as Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Earlier this week, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised the Liberals “will have no rest until the [carbon] tax is gone.”
But as voting kicked off Thursday, the Liberals and NDP criticized Poilievre for ducking out of the House that evening to attend a fundraiser in Quebec.
Poilievre later visited with members of the Montreal Jewish community at a synagogue that was recently hit by Molotov cocktails before attending Hanukkah events in the city, a party spokesperson told CBC News on background.
MPs took note of his absence from the House on Thursday evening. Some began chanting, “Where is Pierre?” at the Conservative benches.
‘Refrain from that kind of fun,’ deputy Speaker tells House
Deputy Speaker Chris d’Entremont warns MPs not to chant leaders’ names in the House of Commons.
Conservatives responded with chants of, “Where is Trudeau?” The prime minister was also absent earlier Thursday evening but arrived later and could be seen voting throughout the early morning hours.
D’Entremont promised to have MPs removed if the chanting continued.
The Conservative leader returned to the House shortly after 1 a.m. on Friday and stayed until just after 6 a.m. to participate in voting. While away from the House, he appeared to have participated in votes virtually.
In a speech to his caucus that was posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Poilievre acknowledged the marathon vote was challenging.
“I want to thank all of you for the energy that you’re putting in,” he said early Friday. “I know this is not easy. It’s extra time away from family, it’s hard on your health, but we have to make a point. We said we would fight to axe the tax.”
Fast food and occasional naps
The House smelled of fast food as voting stretched from Thursday into Friday. Health Minister Mark Holland showed up to vote in a loud green jacket he said he was wearing to mark the Christmas season.
As voting continued into Friday afternoon, some MPs began wearing more comfortable clothing, including sweaters, jeans and T-shirts.
The chamber was filled with yawns and a number of ministers were seen reading books, while Trudeau was spotted playing a game on his iPad between votes. A rendition of John Denver’s Country Roads could be heard from the government lobby on Friday evening.
At one point, International Trade Minister Mary Ng had to be woken up to cast her vote after she nodded off in the chamber.
MPs react to Conservatives delaying House business
Conservative MP Andrew Scheer says mission accomplished while Liberal MP Karina Gould and NDP MP Peter Julian decry the Conservatives’ effort to delay the Christmas break.
Procurement Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, who sits beside Ng and was distracted by his tablet, also had to be tapped to ensure he cast his vote. He then jokingly grabbed a glass of water and pretended to dump it on his head.
House members voted both in person and virtually. At times during the night, the Liberal benches were three-quarters full, while the Official Opposition benches were more sparsely populated.
Votes to approve government spending are confidence votes: If they don’t pass, the government falls.
All of the votes were won by the government side of the House by large margins throughout the night and into the morning, with the Bloc and NDP siding with the Liberals.
The Conservatives voted against every government estimate, one of which drew criticism from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC).
The spending estimates for the Department of National Defence include funding for Operation Unifier, an armed forces training mission for Ukrainian soldiers. The Conservatives voted against approving that estimate.
“Canada’s support for Ukraine should be unanimous and beyond political games,” UCC national president Alexandra Chyczij said in a statement.
MPs get silly after marathon overnight House session
MPs embraced the silliness on Friday morning after an overnight marathon session of votes in the House of Commons sparked by a flood of amendments by the Conservatives.
At 8:39 am on Friday, Speaker Greg Fergus told the House that about half of the 135 votes had been dealt with, an announcement that was met with tired cheers and applause from the government benches.
Shortly after that announcement, NDP MP Daniel Blaikie stood up in the House to say, according to his math, the remaining votes will not force the House to sit until Christmas.
“Are there some other votes that we’re not aware of that the leader of the Conservative Party is, or did he mislead Canadians?” he said, referring to Poilievre’s promise to keep MPs voting throughout the Christmas season.
Conservative House leader Andrew Scheer spoke to reporters just before 11 a.m. He said his party had “successfully killed a day of government business” and Conservative MPs “are going to keep doing this until [Trudeau] listens to Canadians and axes the tax.”
House leaders speak after long night
“The purpose of this [is] to do everything we can to hold up Justin Trudeau’s destructive agenda. And if he wants to get out of Ottawa, to get out of town early, he’s going to have to listen to us and take the tax off,” he added.
The Conservatives say they want the Liberals to lift the carbon tax from all home-heating energy sources, pass a bill to grant carbon tax relief to some farmers and exempt all First Nations from the carbon levy, as some chiefs have demanded.
Poilievre put forward a motion calling on the government to meet those demands on Thursday. It was defeated.
Government House leader Karina Gould spoke to reporters after Scheer. She said the tactics the Conservatives are employing in the House would not accomplish any of Poilievre’s stated objectives.
“What the Conservatives are doing right now is so silly and absolutely ridiculous,” she said. “This is not leadership. Mr. Poilievre continues to gaslight Canadians for clickbait.
“There are three parties in this House that believe that climate change is real. There is one that doesn’t.”
Gould said the Conservatives can keep the government voting “all day” and the Liberals will continue to stand up to the Conservatives, whom she described as “bullies.”
NDP House leader Peter Julian said the Conservatives’ tactics do not serve their MPs well and suggested the cost to keep the House operating overnight does not represent value for money.
“What [Poilievre] was trying to do was cancel Christmas, but what he’s really done is cancel his own credibility, I think, over the course of the last few hours,” he said.
OTTAWA – Liberal House leader Karina Gould lambasted Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as a “fraudster” this morning after he said the federal carbon price is going to cause a “nuclear winter.”
Gould was speaking just before the House of Commons is set to reopen following the summer break.
“What I heard yesterday from Mr. Poilievre was so over the top, so irresponsible, so immature, and something that only a fraudster would do,” she said from Parliament Hill.
On Sunday Poilievre said increasing the carbon price will cause a “nuclear winter,” painting a dystopian picture of people starving and freezing because they can’t afford food or heat due the carbon price.
He said the Liberals’ obsession with carbon pricing is “an existential threat to our economy and our way of life.”
The carbon price currently adds about 17.6 cents to every litre of gasoline, but that cost is offset by carbon rebates mailed to Canadians every three months. The Parliamentary Budget Office provided analysis that showed eight in 10 households receive more from the rebates than they pay in carbon pricing, though the office also warned that long-term economic effects could harm jobs and wage growth.
Gould accused Poilievre of ignoring the rebates, and refusing to tell Canadians how he would make life more affordable while battling climate change. The Liberals have also accused the Conservatives of dismissing the expertise of more than 200 economists who wrote a letter earlier this year describing the carbon price as the least expensive, most efficient way to lower emissions.
Poilievre is pushing for the other opposition parties to vote the government down and trigger what he calls a “carbon tax election.”
The recent decision by the NDP to break its political pact with the government makes an early election more likely, but there does not seem to be an interest from either the Bloc Québécois or the NDP to have it happen immediately.
Poilievre intends to bring a non-confidence motion against the government as early as this week but would likely need both the Bloc and NDP to support it.
Gould said she has no “crystal ball” over when or how often Poilievre might try to bring down the government
“I know that the end of the supply and confidence agreement makes things a bit different, but really all it does is returns us to a normal minority parliament,” she said. “And that means that we will work case-by-case, legislation-by-legislation with whichever party wants to work with us. I have already been in touch with all of the House leaders in the opposition parties and my job now is to make Parliament work for Canadians.”
She also insisted the government has listened to the concerns raised by Canadians, and received the message when the Liberals lost a Toronto byelection in June in seat the party had held since 1997.
“We certainly got the message from Toronto-St. Paul’s and have spent the summer reflecting on what that means and are coming back to Parliament, I think, very clearly focused on ensuring that Canadians are at the centre of everything that we do moving forward,” she said.
The Liberals are bracing, however, for the possibility of another blow Monday night, in a tight race to hold a Montreal seat in a byelection there. Voters in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun are casting ballots today to replace former justice minister David Lametti, who was removed from cabinet in 2023 and resigned as an MP in January.
The Conservatives and NDP are also in a tight race in Elmwood-Transcona, a Winnipeg seat that has mostly been held by the NDP over the last several decades.
There are several key bills making their way through the legislative process, including the online harms act and the NDP-endorsed pharmacare bill, which is currently in the Senate.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Canadians in two federal ridings are choosing their next member of Parliament today, and political parties are closely watching the results.
Winnipeg’s Elmwood —Transcona seat has been vacant since the NDP’s Daniel Blaikie left federal politics.
The New Democrats are hoping to hold onto the riding and polls suggest the Conservatives are in the running.
The Montreal seat of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun opened up when former justice minister David Lametti left politics.
Polls suggest the race is tight between the Liberal candidate and the Bloc Québécois, but the NDP is also hopeful it can win.
The Conservatives took over a Liberal stronghold seat in another byelection in Toronto earlier this summer, a loss that sent shock waves through the governing party and intensified calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down as leader.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – The latest phase of a federal inquiry into foreign interference is set to kick off today with remarks from commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue.
Several weeks of public hearings will focus on the capacity of federal agencies to detect, deter and counter foreign interference.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and key government officials took part in hearings earlier this year as the inquiry explored allegations that Beijing tried to meddle in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
Hogue’s interim report, released in early May, said Beijing’s actions did not affect the overall results of the two general elections.
The report said while outcomes in a small number of ridings may have been affected by interference, this cannot be said with certainty.
Trudeau, members of his inner circle and senior security officials are slated to return to the inquiry in coming weeks.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
