Shouting match dominates question period after rules flouted

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OTTAWA — Thursday’s question period devolved into an off-mic shouting match after the Conservative leader insisted on directing his questions toward members of the opposition and not the government.

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Pierre Poilievre kicked off question period by addressing Quebec Premier Francois Legault’s pleas to Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet to reverse his earlier decision and vote in favour of the Tories’ upcoming confidence motion, which if successful would topple the minority Liberals. 

“Will the leader of the Bloc Quebecois listen to what the premier of Quebec is asking, that the Bloc Quebecois not support the Liberal government next week,” Poilievre said in French. 

That’s a violation of the rules of question period — an opportunity for the opposition to pose questions to the government, not each other.

In response, Public Services Minister Jean-Yves Duclos praised the new crop of House of Commons pages, whose new term coincided with this week’s beginning of the fall sitting. 

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Speaker Greg Fergus then rose to remind MPs to direct questions toward the government.

The rebuke didn’t faze Poilievre, who accused the Bloc of abandoning the province’s separatist Parti Quebecois. 

That brought another rebuke from Fergus.

“This is a matter that has nothing to do with the federal government,” Fergus said in French.

Poilievre, switching to English, then turned his attention to NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, accusing him of staging the end of the supply-and-confidence agreement to garner votes in Monday’s byelections.

“As soon as the votes were counted, he betrayed them, too, and taped back together this carbon tax coalition,” Poilievre said.

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“How can anyone ever believe what he says again?”

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Fergus rose again, but because the Conservatives have a daily allotment of five questions and none of them were directed at the government, he expressed his discomfort with the situation and turned the floor over to Poilievre, who doubled down on his attacks against Singh.

“He put out a Hollywood production where he claimed he had torn up the carbon tax coalition onto which he had signed up, that he was going to stop fighting for his pension and start fighting for the people,” he said, which prompted angry shouts from the NDP benches.

“He is a fake, a phony and a fraud. How can anyone ever believe what this sellout NDP leader says in the future.”

Eyewitnesses in the House told the Toronto Sun that prompted Singh to stand in the aisle shouting at Poilievre, daring him to “say it to my face.”

When Singh took the floor later in the session, his voice sounded painfully hoarse from shouting.

A defeated-looking Fergus called for order as the House devolved into shouting matches, prompting him to mute the House audio from broadcast.

“Colleagues, there are some long-standing traditions of this house, which we should endeavour to respect,” he said.

“It is important that we ask questions in question period to make the government accountable to the people of Canada.”

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