OTTAWA – The most bitter spring sitting of parliament since Stephen Harper’s Conservatives came to power more than seven years ago has ended with a rare piece of agreement – unanimous consent to adjourn for the summer.
All parties agreed late Tuesday night to pull the plug after almost a month of late-night sittings.
The House of Commons calendar had MPs remaining at work in Ottawa through the end of this week, however proceedings in the House had devolved into acrimonious mud-slinging.
The government remains under a potentially criminal cloud over a $90,000 cheque that was provided by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff to pay off the improper housing expense claims of Senator Mike Duffy.
The Conservatives responded with a loud counter-attack that involved questioning Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s past moonlighting as a paid public speaker and the driving habits of NDP Leader Tom Mulcair.
Harper has spent the past week in Europe for a G8 summit, avoiding the scrutiny of the daily question period in the Commons, but he returns to Ottawa Wednesday morning and will begin preparing for a Conservative party policy convention in Calgary later this month and an anticipated summer cabinet shuffle to shake up his front bench.
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