Conservatives call on Speaker to resign, saying he let Trudeau cross line

— Conservative MPs want House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus to resign after ejecting their leader — and not Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — during a heated debate Tuesday.

The Tories say Fergus did not apply the rules equally during a tense back and forth between Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

Poilievre was kicked out of the chamber after he called Trudeau a “wacko prime minister” and refused Fergus’s request to withdraw the remark. His entire caucus eventually left as well in protest.

The insult was hurled as Poilievre pressed Trudeau to agree to British Columbia’s request to amend a Health Canada provision decriminalizing public possession of hard drugs like heroin and fentanyl.

Trudeau instead shot back that Poilievre did not deserve elected office, accusing him of courting far-right extremists.

Last week, videos emerged of Poilievre visiting a carbon price protest camp in Atlantic Canada where one of the trailers featured a drawing of a symbol belonging to the far-right online group Diagolon.

Conservative MP John Brassard said Wednesday that Trudeau used “undignified” language Tuesday by inferring that Tories are connected to white nationalists.

“The Conservative party has never been represented by a more diverse group in this country like we’ve seen now, and to imply and infer that somehow we are white nationalists or racists, I think is undignified,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Michael Barrett, the party’s ethics critic in Parliament, said equal rules must be applied in the House when the prime minister is delivering what Barrett calls “personal insults” instead of defending his drug policy.

A spokesman for Fergus said Wednesday that the Speaker didn’t just single out Poilievre, noting he also asked Trudeau to reframe one of his questions after he called Poilievre a “spineless leader.”

“The prime minister reframed his answer,’ Mathieu Gravel said.

“The Speaker offered Mr. Poilievre four opportunities to withdraw his comment and reframe his question. Mr. Poilievre did not avail himself of those opportunities.”

Poilievre instead told Fergus he would replace the word “wacko” with “extremist” and “radical,” which the Speaker rejected, asking him to withdraw use of the term altogether.

When he did not, Fergus ordered him to leave.

The Conservative leader cried censorship and said Fergus was trying to protect the prime minister.

Gravel said Fergus “has no intention of resigning.”

Most of Wednesday’s question period was far less raucous, with the Conservatives set in a sedate tone. The back-and-forth between opposition and government MPs, which saw both Trudeau and Poilievre participate, unfolded without need for the Speaker to step in.

Poilievre avoided bringing up the previous day’s events.

He spoke in a slow, measured manner throughout, and didn’t react when Trudeau referenced the “new, more reasonable tone of the leader of the Opposition” and again accused Poilievre of refusing to “condemn violent extremism.”

But close to an hour into question period, when Trudeau did it again, some Conservative MPs began shouting “black face” at him. That was a reference to images of Trudeau that emerged in 2021 showing him wearing black or brown face on more than one occasion before he entered politics.

House of Commons rules state if the Speaker determines “offensive or disorderly language” was used, the MP will be asked to withdraw the unparliamentary remarks, and “must rise in his or her place to retract the words unequivocally.”

The rules don’t define unparliamentary language.