Marathon ends without a winner
O T TAWA • If there were winners at the end of nearly 21 hours of marathon voting in the House of Commons on Friday, you couldn’t see it to look at them.
At 2: 45 p. m. on Friday, Conservative House leader Candice Bergen rose to put an end to the Conservative filibuster that had begun around 6 p. m. the evening before. “I believe you would agree with me that this has been a very, very long day,” she said. Even as she spoke, parliamentarians were already wrapping up phone cords, packing up bags and filing papers away in their desks.
“Yes,” they called out in tired unison as they agreed to cut the Conservatives’ plan to call 259 votes short around the halfway mark and go home.
The Tories claimed they’d made their point. They had forced the voting marathon in protest of the Liberals’ refusal to have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser, Daniel Jean, appear before a parliamentary committee to discuss the prime minister’s recent trip to India.
The Conservatives began to filibuster after the Liberals defeated their motion Thursday to have Jean appear before the public safety committee. Their keen interest in having him do so stems from Trudeau’s trip to India last month, where Jaspal Atwal, convicted of the attempted murder of an Indian cabinet minister in 1986, appeared at an event and was photographed alongside Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau. In briefings to reporters afterwards, a government official suggested that factions within the Indian government might have orchestrated Atwal’s presence to embarrass Trudeau. The Conservatives have called that suggestion a conspiracy theory, and demanded that the official, whom they say was Jean, to answer questions about the briefing before parliamentarians.
“I think we made our point and we’ve hammered home that we’re not going to stop raising this issue. There’s other ways we can do that,” foreign affairs critic Erin O’Toole told reporters after the filibuster petered out Friday. In behind-the-scenes negotiations between parties, he said, the Conservatives had been willing to accept just half an hour of Jean’s time — down from their original ask of two hours. But the Liberals, O’Toole claimed, wouldn’t budge.
“When they weren’t willing to even negotiate over a couple of minutes of time, it showed the cover-up is an allhands-on-deck approach,” he said. “And so we’re going to have to try some new tactics.”
But as MPs filed out of the House of Commons dressed in their coats and scarves to head home for the weekend, they mostly just looked drained. Some were still planning to make it back to their home ridings, including Conservative MP Gérard Deltell, who said he had a five- hour drive to Quebec City ahead of him.
Environment minister Catherine McKenna, who represents Ottawa Centre, emerged from the chamber carrying a sleeping bag and pillow and said she was heading home to bed. Asked for her plans, Employment Min- ister Patty Hajdu blurted, “Oh my gosh, sleep, home, have a good night.”
Hajdu had seemed to have an especially hard time getting through the wee hours of the morning in the House of Commons. As the voting stretched into its twelfth hour, she was slumped across her desk between each vote, a red shawl around her shoulders.
Beyond group punishment, it’s not clear what the Tories actually achieved with the marathon voting session. A red-eyed Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer had emerged early Friday morning after a four-hour stint in the House of Commons to say the filibuster was a matter of principle.
“It’s the principle of accountability and respect for Parliament,” he told the Post. “And the prime minister is showing utter contempt for Parliament and our role here.”
But inside the chamber, the focus had been on just getting through the night. The dull buzz of chatter was punctuated by MPs shouting their assent or dissent to each motion before standing to be counted, one by one. On the Liberal front bench at 5 a.m., near the Speaker’s chair, heritage minister Mélanie Joly chatted with health minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor. Her legs tucked up beneath her, foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland read the novelist Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage, February selection from Oprah Winfrey’s book club.
(TRUDEAU) IS SHOWING UTTER CONTEMPT FOR PARLIAMENT.
At the f ar end of the chamber, nearer Hajdu, the suffering was clear. Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott slumped forward like Hajdu, while Crown-Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett sprawled between them, her head resting against the back of her chair.
Tory MP Scott Reid, meanwhile, flipped through A New Dictionary of Quotations — an enormous, 1,347- page tome on his desk.
A parallel debate played out on Twitter, little spats between MPs often instigated by Conservative MP Michelle Rempel, herself overseas and unable to attend. “Oh boo hoo,” she tweeted yesterday evening after Transport Minister Marc Garneau announced he wouldn’t be able to attend a conference in Quebec because of the voting. “Find your spine and go to the meeting if you really care about it.”
By 6: 45 a. m., the brightening sky outside seemed to bring a little more energy in the House. None of the members present was still obviously asleep. Somebody’s phone was playing Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, loudly enough that the tune drifted up to the press gallery, but nobody seemed to mind.
The hours passed. New Democrat Niki Ashton tended to her infant twins, who cried now and then.
And then, with their weekend looming ever closer, the Conservatives decided their point was made, and it was over. “I’m really happy to go home,” said Garneau, on his way out the door.