The Conservatives have tabled a motion to try to declare non-confidence in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre presented the motion before the House of Commons on Tuesday on the first “opposition day” of the fall sitting of the Parliament.
The motion simply states: “The House has no confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government.”
This comes on the heels of a tumultuous summer for the Liberal government, which saw two major byelection losses and the NDP withdrawing support from its supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals earlier this month.
Meanwhile, support for Trudeau and his Liberal government has hit a “new low,” polling shows.
The Conservative motion was being debated by MPs on Tuesday before it will be put for a vote on Wednesday.
The Tories’ non-confidence motion is expected to fail since both the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois have signalled that they will not support it.
Speaking to reporters outside the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, Trudeau said the Conservatives were only “thinking about power right now.
“I’m thinking about how we can best help Canadians,” he said.
Debating the motion in the House of Commons, Poilievre said that after nine years of the Liberal government, the “promise” of Canada is “broken.”
He blamed the government for the affordability crisis, rising housing costs, and the country’s drug overdose problems.
Poilievre also said Canadians are “suffering the pain of a brutal economy — the worst economy since the Great Depression.”
He touted that the Conservatives have a “common sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.”
Government House Leader Karina Gould said Poilievre’s plan to run the government is not any different than the last time the Conservatives were in power.
“What I recall when the Conservatives were in government was a country that was ashamed of what we were doing on the world stage, it was ashamed that we were not fighting climate change, and it was a country that was ashamed that we were putting forward divisive politics and not bringing people together,” she said.
“For someone who all he does is talk about how this country is broken, it’s a shame that he wants to put forward a vision that doesn’t put Canadians at the heart of what our government is doing,” Gould added.
She went on to say that the Liberal government for the past nine years has “put Canadians first” and that is “what we will continue to do throughout this minority Parliament.”
The debate in the House of Commons got heated at times with the Speaker repeatedly calling MPs out for heckling.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said that his party will vote against the non-confidence motion, saying New Democrats won’t let Poilievre “call the shots.”
Singh argued that the Tories have a track record of cuts to health care, noting that Poilievre voted against the dental-care program for low-income Canadians and the national pharmacare program, both of which were agreed upon in the Liberal-NDP deal.
“Cutting health care is at the very core of Conservative values,” he said.
“Look to any province where Conservatives have been in power and look at the state of the health-care system, they will be in shambles because that is what Conservatives do. They cut health care.”
On the other hand, Singh said the Liberal government under Trudeau “is too weak” to stop the “Conservative cuts”
“After decades of cuts and broken promises, Canadians are going to need a lot of work, a lot of work to restore hope and give people relief,” Singh said.
“So, the next election is about that choice, a choice between the cuts of Conservatives or the hope and relief of New Democrats.”
Speaking in French, Bloc Quebecois MP Alain Therrien said that the Conservative motion is “void of any sense” and that his party will not support it, but there will be other opportunities to topple the Liberal government.
Therrien highlighted three reasons for opposing the motion. The first is that the Bloc wants to make gains for Quebec and it stands ready to negotiate with the minority government on important issues.
Secondly, there is no rush as there will be other non-confidence votes between now and Christmas and there is still one more year to go before the next scheduled federal election.
“We are in a situation where there will be other chances to bring down the government, so we’re saying let’s give the government a chance,” Therrien said.
“We’re going to give them the chance to show us that they deserve our confidence and the Quebeckers deserve their confidence temporarily at least.”
Finally, the Bloc is also not keen to see the Conservatives in power, Therrien said, arguing Poilievre has “not solutions, but slogans.”
—With files from Global’s Sean Boynton