Liberals go on the power play

Assertion of control justifies move

OTTAWA • When rumours first emerged last week the Liberals would take a Conservative motion designed to get a new committee looking into the WE scandal as a confidence vote, they were largely dismissed.

Wild and ultimately unsubstantiated rumours are as common on Parliament Hill as Catholics in Vatican City.

While the first 10 months of 2020 have seemed much longer, the Liberals have only been in power a year. They have a fiscal update coming and legislation to pass. They have a small but not insurmountable lead in polls and plunging Canadians into an election with COVID-19 cases on the rise is a considerable risk.

By Monday, however, it became pretty clear this particular rumour — that the Liberals were prepared to take Canada into a pandemic election campaign — was serious.

So what was behind such an aggressive stance from the Liberals? Why were they prepared to take the country to an election?

One major reason appears to be power politics in a minority Parliament: the Liberals needed to push back against an assertive Conservative opposition and show that they were in control.

“The name of the game in a minority Parliament is control. And if you're an opposition party, you'd like to wrest it away from the government, if you're a government, you'd like to have it,” said Scott Reid, who served as senior advisor to Paul Martin, the last Liberal prime minister to face a minority parliament.

The parliamentary rumour mill ended on Tuesday when Liberal House leader Pablo Rodriguez stopped being coy.

“The truth is simple: MPs cannot establish a new committee with sweeping powers to investigate what they call the government's corruption and assume there is no consequence,” he told reporters. He said plainly that the consequences would be a trip to the polls if the Conservative's motion passed.

The Liberals have faced confidence votes before in this minority. Usually these votes are accompanied by furious deal making. The NDP, Bloc and even the Conservatives have extracted promises and concessions from the Liberals, but this time they were greeted with silence.

Liberal insiders say the motion the Conservatives presented was several steps too far and there was no point negotiating with a party trying to label their efforts as corrupt.

The Conservative motion would have set up an “anticorruption” committee to investigate Liberal scandals, with a focus on the WE Charity issue and it would have given the committee broad powers to demand documents. It would have subpoenaed records of speaking fees paid to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as well as his wife, Sophie, his mother, Margaret, and brother Alexandre.

The committee — which would also have looked at pandemic spending — would have been structured to give the opposition parties more members than standard and appoint someone from the Conservatives as the chair of the committee, giving them more power to set the agenda.

What is and isn't a confidence vote is ultimately up to the government, but a motion like this has never been one before.

While this week's theatrics suggest otherwise, having one committee focus on pandemic spending has unanimous agreement in the House of Commons, in part to free up the multiple committees looking at the issue to focus on other things.

The Liberals proposed such a committee of their own to look at all pandemic spending, but without the Conservatives specific focus and with a government MP still in charge of the agenda.

One senior Liberal described the Conservatives motion as a chocolate dessert, something the Liberals wanted, but the corruption title and the extra powers meant it was covered with cayenne pepper: It simply had too much spice for the Liberals to digest.

But it is clear the Liberals are tired of the WE scandal. One Liberal source said after the prime minister, his chief of staff, ministers, and the clerk of the privy council testified in the summer — and the government provided thousands of documents — Parliament should be able to move on from the WE scandal.

The documents are in dispute because they were redacted by bureaucrats instead of the House of Commons law clerk, but Liberals sources insist that's a minor difference and the bureaucrats were prepared to come and explain the redactions. They argue most importantly the documents weren't censored by political staff.

A Conservative insider said they structured the committee with so much power because they were frustrated by Liberal attempts to stall investigation into the WE scandal. Liberal MPs have filibustered at both the finance and the ethics committee in recent weeks, running out the clock with lengthy speeches to prevent votes on continuing the investigations.

Conservatives also feel Trudeau's move to prorogue

Parliament this year was a clear indicator there is more to be found if the they keep pressing.

Conservative leader Erin O'Toole said the opposition needed control, because the Liberals can't be impartial.

“We felt the committee examining the ethical conduct, the government with repeated ethical scandals should be chaired by an opposition member.”

O'Toole offered to change the name of the committee and even make an amendment making clear the motion was not a confidence manner, but he said Trudeau was pushing his own agenda.

“His designation of this vote as a confidence vote shows that he's willing to put the electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party ahead of the health, safety and well being of Canadians.”

The Conservatives were not prepared to pull their motion and Bloc Québécois Yves-François Blanchet loudly proclaimed his lack of confidence in the government during Question Period.

The NDP were left as the only potential partner and ended the drama on Wednesday afternoon when leader Jagmeet Singh came before reporters, two hours before the vote, and said he wouldn't give Trudeau an election.

The NDP voted against the Conservatives motion, but had they abstained from the vote instead it likely still would have failed as five Conservative MPs were absent from the vote, which a Conservative source insisted was not deliberate.

The Liberals had some limited conversations with the NDP, but they essentially stopped Monday evening; unlike previous votes the Liberals weren't offering Singh much for his support. Singh said it was clear the Liberals wanted to head to the campaign.

“Justin Trudeau wasn't looking for support on a bill. He wasn't trying to get something passed. He was trying to go to an election,” said Singh in a press conference on Thursday after the vote.

According to one party source, the NDP debated the issue for days and considered pulling the plug, going so far as to check in on their election readiness.

The party is in a financial hole from the previous campaign, but has seen strong fundraising in 2020 and could have fought a scaled down campaign. The source said the Liberals should not interpret their support this week as carte blanche for future votes.

The Conservatives have a second motion coming for a vote Monday. That motion calls for a wide range of documents to be provided to the commons health committee and for ministers to testify about the pandemic response, including PPE contracts, rapid testing and vaccine limits.

That vote won't be a confidence measure, but an NDP source said had the Liberals tried to force that they would have lost the NDP's support.

Privately, Liberals insist they are not interested in an election, but told the National Post they were confident the opposition would back down.

They also said, while they don't want one, they were not afraid of an election either and an increasingly difficult Parliament may leave them without options.

A Leger poll conducted last week, had the Liberals with 36 per cent support, ahead of the Conservatives at 29 per cent and the NDP at 18 per cent.

Reid, the former Martin advisor, said the Conservatives proposed committee had the potential to keep the attention away from the Liberals' plans for the pandemic and onto scandals they want to move away from.

He said the move this week could potentially stabilize the minority parliament because it gives the Liberals control of the agenda and makes it clear they're not afraid to push back.

“If you're a sitting government and you fear an election, then you're a concession waiting to occur. And the opposition will smell it, and they will know it, and they will force it.”

THE NAME OF THE GAME IN A MINORITY PARLIAMENT IS CONTROL.

ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS Privately, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals insist they are not interested in an election, but sources have told the National Post they were confident the opposition would back down.