The Conservatives are attempting to topple Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government once again with their third non-confidence motion of the fall.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre tabled his motion before the House of Commons on Thursday.
The motion is using past snippets of criticisms of Trudeau’s Liberals coming from the New Democratic Party.
Poilievre said he was presenting this motion in the “spirit of non-partisanship.”
“I rise today in the spirit of non-partisanship, put our differences aside and take a good idea and a good perspective no matter where it comes from,” Poilievre told MPs on Thursday after tabling the motion.
“Too often in this place, we refuse to accept ideas or input from other people and so I thought I would remedy that by taking the words and the message of the leader of the NDP and putting them in a Conservative motion so that all of us could vote for the very wise things that he said.”
The text of the motion quotes NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh when he announced in September that his party was pulling out of the supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberal government.
“Whereas the NDP Leader said, ‘the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people,’” the motion states in preamble and continues to ask that: “Therefore, the House agrees with the NDP Leader and the House proclaims it has lost confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government.”
The motion also includes Singh’s comment criticizing the Liberal government for imposing binding arbitration to end the railway shutdown in August.
Voting for this motion will take place on Monday.
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The minority Liberals need the support of at least one other party in the House of Commons to survive such votes or pass any legislation.
Poilievre’s motion states that Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon’s order to impose binding arbitration on railway workers violated their right to strike.
In a debate that followed the tabling of the motion, MacKinnon accused Poilievre of backing anti-union bills.
“On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, Liberals have been there for workers from day one. On this side of the House, we stand on our record, not empty slogan,” MacKinnon said.
Singh did not participate in the debate Thursday, but NDP MP Matthew Green criticized Poilievre’s stance on workers’ rights.
“Despite all this cosplay we see in front of us … has this member ever once in his life actually visited a picket line?” he asked. To which Poilievre responded: “Yes, Mr. Speaker.”
Two previous motions by the Conservatives in September and October failed and this third one won’t likely pass as the NDP have said they will oppose it.
If a non-confidence motion were to pass, the government would fall and a snap election would be triggered.
Singh said on Tuesday that he won’t play Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s “games.”
He said he is not going to vote non-confidence and trigger an election when he believes Poilievre would cut programs the NDP fought for, like dental care and pharmacare.
“I’m not going to be playing Pierre Poilievre’s games. I have no interest in that. We’re frankly not going to allow him to cut the things that people need. I want to actually have dental care expanded, I want people to actually start to benefit from the pharmacare legislation we passed,” Singh said.
The non-confidence vote was scheduled after Speaker Greg Fergus intervened to pause a filibuster on a privilege debate about a green technology fund.
The Conservatives have said they would only end that debate if the NDP agree to topple the government or if the Liberals turn over unredacted documents at the centre of the parliamentary gridlock.
Another two Conservative motions would be heard Monday and Tuesday, with both set for a vote on Tuesday, barring changes to those plans.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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