OTTAWA—The Liberal government says it will not use delay tactics to avoid a parliamentary vote that would trigger an election to this fall as Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre goaded his political opponents to trigger an immediate trip to the polls.
House Leader Karina Gould said the government does not intend to stave off until late fall any motion the Opposition parties might bring forward nor does not intend to formally suspend Parliament right away and delay the kick-start of a new session in order to buy time.
Gould said the government intends to conduct business as “normal as any minority Parliament can be when it comes to Opposition days.”
However, the Liberals had not offered Conservatives a schedule for the seven days this fall when Opposition parties can introduce their own motions that could trigger the government’s fall, indicating only that chance will not come in the first week.
Gould said the Trudeau Liberals are prepared to work with either the NDP or the BQ in the next sitting, pointing to bills she believes the NDP also supports, such measures to restore citizenship rights to “lost Canadians,” address supply chain issues, enact military justice reform, combat online harm, and improve First Nations drinking water.
The day before Parliament returns for the fall sitting, Poilievre painted his political Opposition colleagues as too cowardly to vote with him to trigger an election and bring down the government.
He cast BQ leader Yves-Francois Blanchet as having betrayed Quebecers interests in voting “180 times” to support the Trudeau Liberals’ more centralized power in Ottawa, and pushing Quebec “to the breaking point” over increased immigration.
“Quebecers will have sovereignty over their wallets” when a Conservative government is elected, Poilievre said.
Taking aim at the NDP, he said, “If Jagmeet Singh gets the chance, he will reverse himself once again and sell out the people to vote in favour of this carbon tax coalition.”
In a speech to open a Conservative fall strategy meeting Sunday, Poilievre pounded the message he’s taken across the country that he wants a “carbon tax election.” He said planned increases up to 2030 in the Liberal government’s carbon pricing scheme will cause “nuclear winter for our economy.”
The House of Commons resumes Monday after a summer recess in which the Liberals parried questions about Justin Trudeau’s leadership, the NDP leader Singh’s decision to bail on a co-operation agreement with the Liberals, and the Conservatives’ roughly 20-point lead in public opinion polls.
Conservative MPs showed a spring in their step as they gathered for a one-day retreat at West Block in Ottawa, at which they heard from speakers on economic, housing and security issues.
“It’s go time,” said Manitoba MP James Bezan.
“It’s good to be back. And I don’t say that very often,” quipped MP John Barlow.
“The wild card is really the Bloc (Quebecois),” said MP Marilyn Gladu. “We know that Jagmeet has said he’ll vote in non-confidence. I don’t know if he’s going to put his money where his mouth is. We’ll see. We’re certainly going to bring a vote in non-confidence. But what will the Bloc do? That’s the question.”
After the end nearly two weeks ago of the NDP-Liberal agreement that had created a certain amount of stability in the minority Parliament in exchange for progress on policies like dental care, a nascent pharmacare framework, and federal anti-scab legislation, the political rhetoric of all leaders has heated up.
Poilievre, who has been vague on how he would cut greenhouse gas emissions, said he will lead the charge to trigger an immediate vote that should be a referendum on the Liberals’ carbon pricing regime.
Introduced by his newest MP, Don Stewart, who won the June 24 byelection in Toronto-St. Paul’s, Poilievre said “how incredibly proud and even a little bit shocked I was that in the Liberal fortress of St. Paul’s, the people voted for our common sense plan.”
And Poilievre teed up Monday’s two federal by-elections in Montreal’s LaSalle-Emard-Verdun and Winnipeg’s Elmwood-Transcona ridings as tests for his rivals, not him.
He said the BQ is no different than the Liberals and NDP, acting against Quebecers’ interests, and the NDP’s Singh pulled out of their deal with the Liberals merely to “trick” voters in the two by-elections that there is daylight between him and Trudeau.
Poilievre focused most of his remarks on attacking the fuel charge that Liberals have made the centrepiece of their climate action plan along with household rebates to encourage Canadians to reduce their carbon footprint.
He said “obviously” the planned hikes through 2030 of the levy would cause “mass hunger and malnutrition,” force seniors to “turn the heat down to 14 or 13 degrees Celsius just to make it through the winter” — without mentioning the federal rebate payments that rise in tandem with the levy that the Liberals say ease the financial burden on households.
Poilievre painted the doom that would ensue.
“Inflation would run rampant, and people would not be able to leave their homes or drive anywhere. But this will shut down our entire economy. It would be a nuclear winter for our economy if we had the highest carbon tax in the world, which is what the NDP-Liberals have voted to impose over the next five and a half years,” Poilievre said.
The Conservative leader touched briefly on his other promises to “stop the crime” by tackling auto theft, bail reform, and closing safe injection drug sites, cutting foreign aid to “put that money back into our military,” lower income taxes and immigration levels, as well as change federal transfer incentives to increase housing supply.
Poilievre mocked Trudeau’s appointment of former central banker Mark Carney who he’s nicknamed “carbon tax Carney” and he said the Liberals’ claim of a “revenue neutral carbon tax” is “like Ogopogo (the legendary Okanagan Lake monster), the Loch Ness monster, you hear about them, but you never actually see it anywhere.”
Carney, said Poilievre, is worse than Trudeau, and disagreed with the government move to exempt home heating oil from the carbon price over the next three years — a measure the Liberals took last spring, citing the lack of alternatives and high dependency of Atlantic Canadian households on home heating oil.
“He wants the carbon tax to be bigger and higher and apply to more things, and now he’s the one advising Justin Trudeau on the economy,” said Poilievre.
Conservative MPs, whose comments to reporters outside were monitored by Poilievre’s press staffers, offered rounds of applause and several standing ovations.
