CONFIDENT THIS TIME — Goss has been flying around Ottawa about election timing at breakneck speeds. A Liberal fundraising email Wednesday suggested “we could be in a federal election next week.” It all seemed very urgent … until it didn’t.
Both the Bloc and NDP put a swift end to all that, saying they will back the Liberals next week. Poilievre accused Singh of taping the supply-and-confidence agreement back together once recent by-elections finished. — Sooner rather than later: The Conservatives will get a second crack at a non-confidence pressure play as early as Thursday next week, since House Leader KARINA GOULD scheduled not one but two (!) oppo days. The Conservatives will have to give notice of the wording two days in advance, per the House standing orders. The first was a straightforward and direct motion of no confidence. A fun question: Will they have more fun with the next one? PHILIPPE BOLDUC of Wellington Advocacy, former chief of staff to former Tory House Leader GÉRARD DELTELL, tells Playbook he might’ve gone with something more pointed: "The House has no confidence in His Majesty's loyal government, which forced workers back to work." — Hooked on procedure: There’s a total of seven oppo days in the fall where simple confidence motions could potentially topple the government. Plus, many more chances for shenanigans and posturing aside from those — such as amending bills at report stage into matters of confidence. — The most likely trigger: “The [spring] budget is kind of the obvious place for this to all go down. The Liberals might even engineer it themselves,” Bolduc suggested to Playbook. WHAT IF THERE’S AN OOPSIE? — The Liberals have been pretty confident this Parliament, typically secured from defeat by a 20ish vote cushion. But with the NDP no longer joined at the hip, and the Liberals slowly bleeding away seats, what happens when the pressure ramps up? And what about if the math starts to get weird, and all those times when no one’s paying close attention to proceedings…? — Count ’em up: The House standings are now: 153 LPC, 119 CPC, 33 BQ, 25 NDP, 2 GPC, and 4 Independents (Rodriguez + former Liberals HAN DONG and KEVIN VUONG + former Tory ALAIN RAYES). — About those numbers: So far, so good. None of the parties but the Conservatives is jonesing for an early election just yet. But what about the curious case where the NDP might abstain on a confidence matter (say, one about labor rights), and the Bloc feels inclined to push the envelope (say, on Quebec)? Things start to get close, since CPC+BQ=152 — just one vote shy of that Liberal count. Oof. — Surprisingly precedented: Sudden elections have happened in the past. Take 1979, when former PM JOE CLARK lost a crucial budget vote because he didn’t have the numbers. — Playbook’s favorite: In 1926, Progressive MP THOMAS BIRD dozed off during proceedings,so the story goes, and when he woke up to a vote, he forgot he was paired (i.e. not supposed to vote to account for an MP on the other side who was unable to cast theirs). Bird brought down the government by accident. He asked to take his vote back, per Hansard, but the House speaker denied him (FYI, MPs). — Fun, yet unlikely: “The parties will tell us. They'll tell us beforehand. There's no confidence vote where you actually don't really know the outcome,” Bolduc tells Playbook. But then there are those rare occasions. In 2005, Independent MP CHUCK CADMAN decided just 30 minutes before a key vote to prop up the minority government of former Liberal PM PAUL MARTIN. Plus, the party whips will put a bit of stick about. “The whips are good enough at their jobs to know when this is going to happen or not. Especially when you add in the voting app and people can vote from wherever,” he added. “Any party that allows that to happen [by accident] is incompetent.” — Reminder: Parliament still has hybrid voting, meaning MPs can cast votes from their smart phones instead of sprinting into the chamber to prevent a catastrophe — like that time in the early days of the Trudeau government, when they almost lost a transport bill known as C-10 when the opposition sprung surprise procedural tricks. And it’s not 1926 anymore. |