Trudeau Passes Confidence Vote – WE Investigation Starts Again

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals with the assistance of the NDP have made it past their first confidence vote this Wednesday morning.

Government House Leader Pablo Rodriguez announced on Tuesday that the authorization for new assistance benefits for jobless workers would be a confidence measure. The bill essentially replaced the past CERB program with a new and mostly identical program.

The motion approved $34 billion in new spending, $17 billion of which was for COVID-19 related spending not meant for the CERB replacement program. 

The Liberals had to ensure this new spending bill was put through in order to keep their government from falling but the NDP was assumed to already be on board with the Liberals after getting them to raise the CERB replacement programs weekly allowance from $400 a week to $500. 

It is unclear whether or not the NDP would have voted against the Liberals bill even if the change was made or not, as the perception of the NDP currently is that they don’t have the money to run a federal campaign. 

Regardless of detail Trudeau has bought himself a significant amount of time despite losing the Bloc Québécois’ support of his government as the NDP seems very unlikely to undermine the Liberals while they are giving NDP leader Jagmeet Singh some political victories to run on once a new election rolls around.

On the other side of things, the time Trudeau’s bought himself away from the scrutiny of the WE Charity scandal investigation by proroguing parliament is now up.

The Conservative Party has now brought forward a new motion in the Procedure and House Affairs Committee asking for Prime Minister Trudeau to testify and turn over documents relating to the Liberal government’s decision and reason to prorogue parliament. 

The Conservatives have been alleging that the prorogation was entirely meant to shut down the WE Charity investigation and give himself a month’s break and force the scandal’s investigation to go back to square one.

Deputy Conservative House leader Karen Vecchio said at a PROC meeting, “I think we’re having a simple request to the government: Why did you prorogue? Yes, there may be a little bit of skepticism of course, but it’s our job to investigate. We’re parliamentarians and our job in committee is to investigate.”

The Conservatives are also looking to have Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, Liberal House Leader Pablo Rodriguez, and Minister of Diversity and Inclusion Bardish Chagger to testify on the decision to prorogue parliament.

The committees previously pursuing the WE Charity scandal investigation have not gotten back up and running yet so the Conservatives have used the PROC to push forward inquiries to the Liberals behaviour and attitude towards the investigation as an additional avenue to exert pressure on them.

It seems like with the CERB replacement program being implemented, and the various WE investigations starting back up and expending, nothing has really changed in Ottawa since before the propagation of parliament, simply a month long pause has occurred.