Justin Trudeau is in a fighting mood

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have won a minority government in last month’s election, but it seems like he’s not finished fighting.

On Thursday, while unveiling a new benefits program for the pandemic, he lashed out at his federal and provincial conservative rivals, as well as punching new federal Democrats in the eye, while insisting he was eager to work with them again when parliament. resumes next month.

“I look forward to working with other parties in the House to do great things for Canadians,” Trudeau told reporters at a news conference in Ottawa.

How well you will work with them is less obvious.

This week, the group of parliamentarians from all parties that sets the House of Commons rules declared that all members of Parliament and their staff should be fully vaccinated before returning to Parliament Hill.

Conservatives objected, though how, or if they will act, on that objection remains to be seen. The party has rejected repeated requests for information from the Star this week.

Then Trudeau, deploying the same tactics he used during the election campaign, said that Erin O’Toole owes Canadians an explanation on two fronts:

The first is the reason why the Conservative leader believes that MPs should not be required to get vaccinated against COVID-19, considering that the vast majority of Canadians are, and that by rejecting vaccination, these elected politicians they could potentially be endangering the lives of their constituents or colleagues. risk.

The second is why O’Toole also believes that it is imperative that all MPs, including those not vaccinated, attend the House of Commons in person.

“There is a great inconsistency in terms of the position of the conservatives,” Trudeau charged on Thursday.

“They not only want unvaccinated parliamentarians to be able to sit in the House of Commons, physically alongside those who are vaccinated, but they do not want a hybrid model, which allows those who are not vaccinated to participate in debates in the House of Commons. the Commons, to represent their constituents, through video ”.

The number of Conservative MPs who are not yet vaccinated remains a mystery. About 65 percent of caucus members have publicly disclosed that they are fully vaccinated, while one has said they have a medical exemption and another says they are partially vaccinated.

But several Conservative MPs have also told the Star that the party has never officially asked them about their vaccination status. Speculation about how many of his colleagues have not received any vaccines ranges from less than five to as many as a dozen.

O’Toole’s office did not respond to repeated requests from the Star Thursday for answers to questions posed by Trudeau.

The office of Alberta Prime Minister Jason Kenney also failed to respond to Trudeau’s allegation that the fight the prime minister wants to wage right now over federal equalization payments is nothing more than a political distraction.

Votes are currently being counted in a province-wide referendum that asked if the equalization program should be removed from the Canadian Constitution, a process that would actually require the acceptance of the rest of the country.

Trudeau accused Kenney of playing politics, noting that he was a federal cabinet minister in the Harper administration when the current equalization formula was devised. And, he noted, Alberta is currently receiving a great deal of targeted support from Ottawa.

“We will go on and on now, with members of the Canadian Red Cross and Canadian Armed Forces present, to support Alberta in the very difficult times they are going through,” Trudeau said, before adding that those “very difficult times” were “linked to decisions that the prime minister himself made and did not take in recent months, resulting in a fourth wave ”of COVID-19.

As for how to protect Canadians from the worst economic consequences of that fourth wave, Trudeau was also willing to fight for that this week.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh met with Trudeau on Wednesday and told him that his government should stop pandemic benefits. That didn’t stop Trudeau from announcing Thursday that three emergency programs – the Canada Response Benefit, the Canada Emergency Wage Grant and the Canada Emergency Rental Grant – will expire this week.

They will be replaced by more specific programs for those who cannot work due to local blockades or who work in specific sectors.

On Wednesday, Singh had suggested that if the Liberals cut those benefits, his party’s support for his government would be at risk.

On Thursday, he called the proposed changes “unacceptable.”

“During the election campaign, Justin Trudeau said that he would have the backs of Canadians in this difficult time, for as long as it takes,” Singh said.

“But today he broke that promise.”

Promise or not, liberals don’t need the NDP to make those changes, but getting the new scaled-down programs extended would require a bill to pass in the House of Commons. And despite their differences, conservatives can be the government’s dance partners. The Tories had already called for the current benefits to be allowed to expire, although their level of enthusiasm for the replacements was difficult to measure immediately.

It has been said that, by returning a Parliament with a structure very similar to the previous one, voters sent a message last month that the parties needed to find a way to get along and work together to help Canadians overcome the pandemic. If Thursday’s events are any indication, the parties did not listen.

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Reference-www.thestar.com

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