VOTING DAY — Conservatives want to block anything that moves on Parliament Hill until the Liberals hollow out the federal carbon price. The Liberals won't do that, so PIERRE POILIEVRE is going to exert as much parliamentary pain as he can muster. The Tory leader wants to make a political point, and he wants to own the final week of Parliament's sitting before MPs head home for the holidays. — How to obstruct: The Official Opposition has a small toolkit of blunt instruments that can prevent a handful of procedurally powerful Liberal-NDP motions from fast-tracking priority government bills. Perhaps the bluntest of them all is a flood of amendments meant to halt whatever the government hopes to accomplish before adjournment. The Conservatives submitted 120 amendments to Treasury Board President ANITA ANAND's spending estimates late Tuesday. They concocted many more for the government's sustainable jobs bill that kept the House natural resources committee voting late into the night Wednesday. — Just watch me: Poilievre boasted about the obstruction before his Wednesday national caucus meeting, basically copping to his plan to hold Parliament hostage unless the Liberals give into his demands to continue to roll back the carbon tax. "We are going to put in thousands of amendments at committee and in the House of Commons, forcing all-night, 'round-the-clock voting to block your $20 billion of inflationary spending, and the rest of your economically destructive plans, until you agree to our demand to take the tax off farmers, First Nations and families. You will know you will have no rest until the tax is gone." Government House Leader KARINA GOULD was unimpressed with the cavalcade of minor tweaks to government bills. "They’re all jokes. They’re about amending the title, they’re about amending specific words," she said Wednesday. "He is not a serious politician." Poilievre's band of Tories isn't the first party to go nuclear on amendments. Liberals slammed the House finance committee with budget bill amendments during the Harper years. They'll do it again. For now, though, House skullduggery is a Tory art. DISRUPTING SUPPLY — Today is a "business of supply" day in the House, when an opposition party hoovers up most headlines with a motion meant to apply pressure on the government. (Today is a Tory opposition day. More on that later.) But the House also votes to approve spending estimates — the literal "supply" of money the government spends. These are often perfunctory, no-drama approvals. But the opposition can force votes on any spending estimate line items. Enter Tory House Leader ANDREW SCHEER, who dropped 120 line-by-line objections on the order paper. Each vote takes more than 10 minutes in the hybrid format. If they vote on all of them, MPs could easily be in the chamber — or voting virtually — for 24 hours. A sample vote: "Notice of opposition to Vote 5b, in the amount of $1, under Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council — Grants, in the Supplementary Estimates (B) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024." Yes, you read that correctly. It's a vote to oppose a loonie's worth of planned spending on a federal research granting council. SPOTLIGHT ON C-50 — The government teamed up with the NDP to fast-track a sustainable jobs bill that Liberals hoped to send to the Senate before the holiday break — a substantive legislative win for a governing party on a key energy transition priority. That agreement sent the bill to the House natural resources committee, which was granted two hours to consider its clause-by-clause analysis of C-50 as well as any amendments submitted by MPs. The goal was to expedite the bill's progress. — Marathon vote: Here, too, the Tories went big, submitting a pile of amendments in time for a Tuesday deadline. The committee spent Wednesday evening arguing points of order and voting, with Liberals and New Democrats combining to defeat most amendments. Conservatives weren't content to simply state "yay" or "nay," routinely offering brief reasons or clearing their throats, further slowing the process. They repeatedly challenged committee chair GEORGE CHAHAL's rulings, losing each of those, too. The committee approved the amended bill at 11:45 p.m., sending it back to the House. C-50 will see just one more day of debate at report stage, and another at third reading. NOT TO MENTION… Conservatives are also out to get House Speaker GREG FERGUS. They have championed a move to force the House procedure committee to consider the party's attempt to force Fergus out of the chair. Scheer led the condemnations of Fergus' decision to record a video tribute for outgoing interim Ontario Liberal leader JOHN FRASER. Once the Liberals indicated they'd support sending the Tory House leader's question of privilege to committee, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. MPs referred the matter to PROC — Hill shorthand for the committee — before adjourning for the day at 7:51 p.m. They also voted unanimously in favor of an amendment to Scheer's motion that forced the committee to hold a meeting into Fergus' conduct no more than 24 hours after the House referred Scheer's question of privilege to committee. — What's next: That means the House procedure committee has to discuss this today. WAIT, THERE'S MORE — The Conservatives will hoover up House time today with debate on the party's latest non-binding motion to eliminate the carbon tax for "farmers, First Nations and families." The odds of the motion passing are slim, but that's not really the goal here. On that point, Poilievre has been clear. His orders to the troops are simple: block it all. | 
