NDP move kills election call, investigative committee

OTTAWA • The Liberal minority government will live another day, as a confidence vote that could have triggered a snap election went in the Liberals' favour with help from the NDP and the Green Party.

The vote was on a Conservative motion to create a special parliamentary committee to investigate the

WE Charity scandal and other controversies around the government. The Liberals deemed the motion a confidence matter, meaning they would seek an election if it passed.

But NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, whose party has 24 seats and has propped up the minority Liberals before, said he would not support an election call.

“New Democrats will not give Prime Minister Trudeau the election he's looking for,” Singh said at a news conference before the vote. “We're not going to be used as an excuse or a cover; we're going to continue to do the work that we need to do.”

The vote on the motion failed with 180 votes against and 146 in favour. NDP and Green Party MPs joined the Liberals in voting against it. Independent MPs Jody Wilson-Raybould and Marwan Tabbara also voted with the Liberals. Bloc Québécois and Conservative Party MPs all voted in favour of the motion.

Government House Leader Pablo Rodriguez said he was pleased with the result.

“Today Parliament chose Canadians over politics,” he said.

Rodriguez said his party made no special deal with the NDP for their support but said he believes other parties came to see the Conservatives' proposed committee as a potential abuse of power.

“I presume that they realized, as we did, how ridiculous and abusive this motion was,” he said.

“There was a general consensus that the Conservative motion was totally abusive. It was paralyzing to government.”

All party leaders had insisted they did not want an election, and opposition party leaders blasted the Liberals for choosing to make this a confidence matter.

“Creating a committee has never in our history been grounds for a confidence vote,” said Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole ahead of the vote.

“It's Mr. Trudeau that is making it a confidence vote because Mr. Trudeau would prefer to try and go to an election rather than (answer) questions about insider spending scandals.”

The Conservatives also grilled Trudeau in question period about whether he had consulted health officials about how a national election might exacerbate the spread of COVID-19.

Trudeau didn't answer the question directly, but he insisted it's the opposition that was risking an election call by pushing for the Conservative motion.

“Our focus is on working with members of this House to deliver concretely for Canadians. We want this House to work constructively,” he said in question period.

“What the members opposite face in a few minutes in the vote is whether they want this House to work constructively.”

Green Party Leader Annamie Paul said her party's caucus decided it was not in the interests of Canadians to have an election.

“We never should have arrived at this point,” she told National Post.

“This was a game of chicken between the Liberals and the Conservatives, and it was very unbecoming of them ... I hope that every Canadian who saw how close we came to a general election in the middle of a pandemic calls their MP to express their disagreement.”

Wilson-Raybould, once a member of Trudeau's cabinet, called it “shameful” that the Liberals had threatened to send the country into an election during a pandemic, and said that was the only reason she voted against the motion.

“Absolutely, there should be no election during a spiking pandemic,” she said in a statement.

“To be clear, I support full investigations into the unethical actions of this government. I know there is more to be uncovered — regarding last year's scandals and this year's. I will work with this minority Parliament to try to move proper oversight and accountability forward.”

The vote took place by the unusual hybrid system that saw some MPs voting virtually from their homes, and other MPs voting in person in the House of Commons.

The motion's defeat means the Conservatives won't get their proposed special committee that would have been tasked with calling witnesses and ordering the production of documents to further study the WE Charity scandal and other controversies. The Conservatives had initially called it an “anti-corruption” committee, but later backed off that name in an attempt to get support from the other parties.

Instead those issues will continue simmering in other parliamentary committees, such as the finance and ethics committees, where the Liberals have been filibustering opposition motions for the past two weeks.

Both the NDP and the Liberals have floated alternative proposals to create a special parliamentary committee that would be constructed differently than the Conservative proposal, but could still examine the WE Charity scandal and other issues. Such a committee could yet be created if the Liberals and NDP can agree on the committee's scope.

Singh, meanwhile, said that the NDP would introduce a motion in the ethics committee to have MPs “continue to have witnesses and documents provide testimony and evidence to ensure that the Liberal government isn't spending money on their rich friends, but instead is focused on helping people; we're going to continue to do that work.”