Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leaves after a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 20.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The Conservatives are setting the wheels in motion for a possible non-confidence vote on the Liberal government within days of the House of Commons returning from its holiday break in late January.
John Williamson, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said on Friday he is recalling his committee to discuss a motion of non-confidence in the government he wants to bring before the House when it returns.
The Conservative manoeuvre ramps up pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his beleaguered government, which would fall if it loses a non-confidence vote.
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The New Democrats, who have been propping up the minority government, earlier this month pulled their support. The NDP plans to table a non-confidence motion during the party’s first and only opposition day in the next parliamentary sitting. But it has not made clear how it would vote on non-confidence motions from other parties.
In a letter to the committee members recalling them on Jan. 7, Mr. Williamson said he would make them meet throughout the month if Liberals on the committee try to filibuster the motion to stop it.
An increasing number of Liberal MPs were calling on Mr. Trudeau to step down before the Commons closed for its Christmas holiday. The waning of support from his own benches came after Mr. Trudeau was dealt a blow by his former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, who announced she was stepping down hours before she was due to present the fall economic statement.
Mr. Trudeau had sidelined Ms. Freeland, telling her days before the fall economic statement that he planned to replace her with former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney in an imminent cabinet shuffle.
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Mr. Carney, who was also a former governor of the Bank of England, did not end up joining the government and Mr. Trudeau appointed loyalist Dominic LeBlanc as Finance Minister instead.
In a statement, the Conservatives repeated their challenge to the NDP to vote with them to bring down the government.
“Conservatives are now presenting the NDP with this first opportunity to bring down the Liberal Government and force an election,” the statement said. “It’s time for the NDP leader to live up to his own words, put his country before his pension and vote non-confidence in the Liberal Government so Canadians can finally have the election they desperately need.”
Mr. Williamson said in his letter to MPs that, after the non-confidence motion has passed through committee, he will introduce his report in the House of Commons on Jan. 27, the day Parliament returns after its six-week break.
“This will ensure the committee’s non-confidence matter can be debated and voted on by the House of Commons as early as Thursday, January 30,” he wrote.
NDP House Leader Peter Julian said his party “is prepared to support a committee-level non-confidence statement that describes how the Liberals let Canadians down.”
But he added that “in the past non-confidence motions passed at committee have not worked, so we will be ready with our own motion of non-confidence.”
“The NDP motion will send Canadians to the polls where they will have a choice between the Conservatives’ plan to cut in order to give more to CEOs; or Jagmeet Singh’s plan to fix health care, build homes people can afford and bring down the price of essentials – Canada’s first real government for the working class,” he said.
However, Liberal MPs could filibuster the committee to stop the motion progressing, and may also assert that the opinion of a committee does not constitute confidence.
In a post on X responding to Liberal MP Francis Drouin, B. Thomas Hall, a former clerk of the Public Accounts Committee, said the matter is “definitely beyond the scope of committee jurisdiction.”
“Liberals should just ignore the committee meeting and raise a point of order about the report when it is tabled” in the Commons, he said.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed to Liberal MP Francis Drouin a post on X stating that non-confidence motions are beyond the scope of the Public Accounts Committee's jurisdiction. The post was made by former committee clerk B. Thomas Hall, in response to Francis Drouin. This version has been updated.