Liberals pull last-minute switch in chaotic vote on Palestinian motion

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Utter chaos. That is what the House of Commons descended into on Monday, especially Monday night just before an important vote on an New Democrat motion calling on the Liberals to recognize Palestinian statehood.

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At the 11th hour, the Liberals introduced a series of 14 amendments that substantially changed the motion. Conservative MPs and some Liberals who had been opposed to the motion stood on points of order to say that dropping these kinds of massive and substantial amendments at the last minute, literally moments before the vote was scheduled, meant they were out of order.

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MPs stood and made impassioned speeches on both sides before the amended motion was eventually passed with a vote of 204-117. The Bloc Quebecois, which backed the original motion, said they couldn’t vote on something that wasn’t even available in French. That’s how new these amendments were: The Justin Trudeau government, those defenders of the French language, hadn’t even translated them before they were introduced.

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In my 20 years of covering Parliament, including five minority governments, I’ve covered same-sex marriage being passed, the 2006 Lebanon war and evacuation, the coalition crisis, the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Afghan war, claims of war crimes against our troops, the end of the Afghan war, trade battles with Donald Trump and more. Yet I haven’t seen a day so chaotic as this one.

Sure, I’ve witnessed committee votes break apart, but not the House itself.

MPs had been debating an NDP motion all day, one that would have called on the government to “officially recognize the state of Palestine.” While the motion was non-binding, given the global and domestic political context, it carried significant weight.

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The Liberals and NDP had held negotiations on amending the motion all weekend with recognition of the state of Palestine being a particular sticking point. As the parties tried to hash it out, the Liberals held an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday to discuss the issue and whether the government could back what the NDP was proposing.

Just as there are divisions in the Liberal caucus, there are divisions in the Liberal cabinet and some wanted to vote in favour. Yet Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, one of the ministers most likely to support the motion, said in the House on Monday that Canada “can’t change foreign policy based on an opposition motion.”

It was clear, though, that the Liberals — or at least most of them — wanted to vote for this motion.

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Speaking with MPs on all sides throughout the day, it appeared that the NDP was going to get its motion passed intact in the original form. Even many Liberals MPs, including some who didn’t support the original wording, felt that was the way things would go.

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Why NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh would cave then and agree to these substantial amendments is puzzling.

The Conservatives tried to argue that the amendments were so sweeping on several fronts that they were out of order. Based on parliamentary procedure, they had a point, including that one section of the amendments effectively amounted to voting against or defeating the original motion.

While the original NDP motion called on Canada to “officially recognize the state of Palestine,” the Liberal change called for Canada to “actively pursue the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace” that works toward the establishment of a state of Palestine via a negotiated solution. That is fundamentally different than what the original motion called for; in fact, it’s the opposite and should have been ruled out of order.

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With deputy Speaker Chris d’Entremont sitting in the chair, the ruling was that he had no ability to stop the vote. He took a different interpretation than I would have taken and that a former Speaker, Conservative MP Andrew Scheer, would have made.

D’Entremont allowed the vote to go ahead just after 9 p.m. Most Liberals voted for the motion, including the cabinet, but a few dissented including Anthony Housefather, Marco Mendicino and Ben Carr.

Ya’ara Saks, the minister for mental health and a Jewish MP who represents a riding with a significant Jewish population, voted in favour of the motion.

In the end, the Liberals got the blessing of the National Council of Canadian Muslims to vote for the watered-down motion. The entire chaotic day wasn’t really about foreign affairs, not for the Liberals and NDP, it was about shoring up support in the growing Muslim voting bloc.

Canada’s foreign affairs policy under Trudeau has nothing to do with principle and is all about diaspora politics.

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