Carney spars with opposition over tariffs, plan for fall budget in first Question Period

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Prime Minister Mark Carney faced for the first time Wednesday direct pressure from opposition parties during the inaugural Question Period of the 45th Parliament.

The beginning of regular proceedings in the House of Commons follows two days of pageantry and tradition – the election of a new Speaker, and then King Charles III delivering the Speech from the Throne.

With Mr. Carney’s agenda now read into the record, his rivals wasted no time in peppering him with questions about how he’ll actually follow through.

“This is where democracy lives, and this is where we provide rigorous scrutiny on every word he says and every dollar he spends on behalf of Canadians,” said interim Opposition leader Andrew Scheer as he kicked off the questioning by pressing Mr. Carney on the tariff dispute with the U.S., and as well as the Prime Minister’s decision not to release a budget until the fall.

Mr. Carney took a swipe back, saying that the Conservatives – in their own election platform – also didn’t promise to quickly introduce a budget if elected. In response to another Conservative question on the budget, this one in French, he insisted the government did have a plan.

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“The new Canadian government has a plan. It has a daring plan, an ambitious plan, to bring together the Canadian economy, have one economy instead of 13, in order to create new projects to build this great nation,” Mr. Carney said.

Though he became Prime Minister when he won the Liberal leadership in March, this week marks the first time Mr. Carney has sat in the House of Commons; he was elected as an MP for the riding of Nepean on April 28. Prior to that, he had not held a seat.

Unlike his predecessor, Mr. Carney didn’t answer every single question put to the government by other parties – something former prime minister Justin Trudeau used to do on Wednesdays.

He took questions from Mr. Scheer, the Conservatives’ Pierre-Paul Hus, and several from the Bloc Québécois, leaving subsequent rounds to his ministers, some of them also making their own debuts in the Commons.

Many responded to questions describing the government as “new,” an assertion met with jeers from Conservatives who pointed out the number of Trudeau-era ministers on the benches.

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The minority Liberals have 169 seats in the House of Commons.

How much time each opposition party has during Question Period is relative to the size of its Commons cohort. The Conservatives, who now hold 144 seats, picked up ridings on April 28, so now have more time than in past governments. But both the Bloc and NDP lost seats, cutting their allotment short.

On Wednesday, interim NDP leader Don Davies only had a single opportunity at the very end of Question Period to push the government.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, who doesn’t have a seat in the House of Commons, spoke with reporters ahead of time but was expected to watch the proceedings from an office on Parliament Hill.

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It was a notable absence; Mr. Poilievre spent 20 years as an MP and used Question Period as a stage from which he built his political brand and the party’s base of support.

“I’ve never really been a spectator of the House, but I’m going to work hard to earn the opportunity to do it again,” he told reporters. Mr. Poilievre intends to run in an Alberta riding, once a by-election can be called.

Though the first Question Period faceoff for the Prime Minister was highly anticipated, the galleries of the chamber weren’t quite full.

Among those watching: PEI Premier Rob Lantz, former Ottawa mayor Jim Watson and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow.

Ms. Chow, who is a former NDP MP, said the first Question Period of this government had “a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm, [and] a lot of hope.”