Conservatives call for the resignation of the speaker of the House of Commons after expelling Poilievre

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OTTAWA – Conservative MPs want Commons Speaker Greg Fergus to resign after ousting their leader, and not Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, during a heated debate Tuesday.

Conservatives say Fergus failed to apply the rules equally during a tense back-and-forth between Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

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Poilievre was kicked out of the chamber after calling Trudeau a “crazy prime minister” and rejecting Fergus’ request to withdraw the comment. His entire group also eventually walked out in protest.

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The insult was thrown when Poilievre pressured Trudeau to agree to British Columbia’s request to amend a Health Canada provision that decriminalizes public possession of hard drugs such as heroin and fentanyl.

Trudeau instead responded that Poilievre did not deserve elected office, accusing him of courting far-right extremists.

Last week, videos emerged of Poilievre visiting a carbon pricing protest camp in Atlantic Canada, where one of the trailers featured a drawing of a symbol belonging to the far-right online group Diagolon.

Conservative MP John Brassard said Wednesday that Trudeau used “disgraceful” language Tuesday in inferring that Conservatives are connected to white nationalists.

“The Conservative Party has never been represented by a more diverse group in this country than we’ve seen now, and I think it’s disgraceful to imply and infer that we’re somehow white nationalists or racists,” he told reporters Wednesday.

Michael Barrett, the party’s ethics critic in Parliament, said equal rules should apply in the House when the prime minister is hurling what Barrett calls “personal insults” rather than defending his drug policy.

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A spokesperson for Fergus said Wednesday that the president did more than just single out Poilievre, noting that he also asked Trudeau to rephrase one of his questions after he called Poilievre a “cowardly leader.”

“The prime minister reformulated his response,” said Mathieu Gravel.

“The president offered Mr. Poilievre four opportunities to withdraw his comment and rephrase his question. Mr. Poilievre did not take advantage of those opportunities.”

Instead, Poilievre told Fergus that he would replace the word “crazy” with “extremist” and “radical,” which the president rejected and asked him to withdraw use of the term entirely.

When he didn’t, Fergus ordered him to leave.

The Conservative leader denounced the censorship and said Fergus was trying to protect the prime minister.

Gravel said Fergus “has no intention of resigning.”

Most of Wednesday’s question period was much less strident, with conservatives adopting a calm tone. The tug-of-war between opposition parliamentarians and the government, in which both Trudeau and Poilievre participated, developed without the president needing to intervene.

Poilievre avoided mentioning the events of the previous day.

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Rather, he spoke slowly and measuredly throughout, and did not react when Trudeau referenced the “new, more reasonable tone of the Opposition leader” and again accused Poilievre of refusing to “condemn violent extremism.”

But almost an hour into question period, when Trudeau did it again, some Conservative MPs began shouting “blackface” at him. This is a reference to images of Trudeau that emerged in 2021, in which he appears in black or brownface on more than one occasion before entering politics.

House of Commons rules state that if the speaker determines that “offensive or disorderly language” was used, the MP will be asked to withdraw the unparliamentary comments and “must rise in his or her place to retract the words unequivocally.” ”.

The rules do not define non-parliamentary language, but instead allow the Speaker to make the decision based on a number of factors, including tone, intent and, most importantly, whether the comments caused any disorder in the chamber. That means the same language can be considered unparliamentary one day but not the next.

Liberals came to Fergus’ defense on Tuesday and continued to criticize Poilievre’s actions and those of his group.

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“When we saw the Conservatives protesting, I thought it was immature,” said Housing Minister Sean Fraser.

“No one sent me to Ottawa to storm out of the House of Commons. Some of the comments I heard coming from opposition MPs were applause for what was happening, saying: “Are you trying to help us with our fundraising?” We are going to raise an extra million dollars with this.”

The Conservative Party launched a fundraising campaign within an hour of the incident.

Similarly, the Liberal Party’s social media sites lit up with images of cabinet ministers and Trudeau himself criticizing Poilievre, accusing him of courting far-right extremists.

Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon said on Wednesday that the president was elected by parliamentarians and respects all their decisions.

On Tuesday, he also compared Poilievre’s behavior to that of former U.S. President Donald Trump, a frequent attack by liberals against the Canadian conservative, accusing the party of importing American-style politics into the country.

“They come into our democratic institutions, they break all the rules, and when they’re asked to break all the rules, they walk away and say they’ve been gagged,” MacKinnon said.

With files from Anja Karadeglija and Mickey Djuric

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