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On April 30, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poièvre drew applause from Conservative MPs as he made his points during a question-and-answer session in Ottawa.Adrian Wilde/Canadian Press
The opposition leader really wanted to call the prime minister a freak. At least he didn't want it back.
That is why Pierre Poièvre was expelled from the House of Commons. At least, that was the direct cause.
Poièvre decided to vent his anger in the midst of a grueling question period in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused him of courting white supremacists. It would have been easy to avoid the chairman's punishment, but he did not do so.
Now, there's no doubt that these two hate each other.
Tuesday's question period was one of the worst ever.
Since Mr. Poièvre made his debut as opposition leader in 2022, there have been occasional fireworks but more often than not violent attacks on a dispirited Liberal front bench.
What changed this week was that the Liberals found their own line of attack, much to the anger of Mr. Poilievre and the Conservatives.
The Liberal Party highlighted Poièvre's stop at a roadside carbon tax protest last week, after what appeared to be symbols of the far-right group Diagoron were found in one of the group's vans, and Poièvre was accused of a U.S. conspiracy. praised. theorist Alex Jones;
When the House of Commons resumed sitting on Monday, Liberal Leader Stephen McKinnon prepared for a direct hit, warning Canadians once again that Mr. Poièvre was “visiting with supporters of white supremacy, anarchy and misogyny.” He claimed to have witnessed the incident and called out the Conservative Party leader. to disavow them.
The Conservative Party took this as more than a normal political necessity. Poilievre and many MPs were furious when Trudeau struck a similar tone Tuesday, accusing Conservative leaders of “actively courting the support of groups with white supremacist views.” And it's not just the usual theatrical madness.
They believed House Speaker Greg Fergus should have censured Mr. Trudeau, but things started to boil over when Mr. Trudeau expelled Conservative MP Rachel Thomas, saying he was ashamed of his actions. Ta. That's why Wakko became a problem.
For the record, there was a lot of anti-Congressional terminology thrown around during Question Period on Tuesday. Members of Congress should not call each other liars, fraudsters, scumbags, racists, or other downright offensive epithets. Mr. Poièvre said Mr. Trudeau had spent half his adult life as a “practicing racist,” a reference to Mr. Trudeau's blackface, and that the prime minister had spent half of his adult life as a “practicing racist.” They called him spineless.
What's funny is that no matter how outraged the Liberals and Conservatives are at the other side's provocations, they don't seem to hear themselves doing so. They don't think they should quit.
In this schoolyard, Mr. Fergus is the unlucky hall warden who no one listens to. In December, the Conservative Party tried to expel outgoing Ontario Liberal Party Interim Leader John Fraser for breaching impartiality standards after he appeared in a congratulatory video sent to him wearing the Speaker's robes. did. Since then, he has been begging for order, rather than insisting on it.
What got Poilievre kicked out wasn't his words, but his attempt to mock the speaker's already expanded powers. He called B.C.'s acceptance of drug decriminalization “this weird policy by a weird premier.”
When Mr Fergus called for the term extra-parliamentary to be withdrawn, Mr Poièvre said he would instead replace it with “extremist”. But it's the kind of non-secession that House members have rejected for decades, and Poilievre, a 20-year veteran of the House, knows it. It would be easy to say he took back his anti-Congress words – MPs do it all the time, with widely varying degrees of sincerity – but it's clear he wanted to be suspended. is.
When he repeatedly refused to retract his words, he was forced to quit his job that day. Conservative members of Congress followed his lead in expressing their righteous indignation.
There were a lot of things like that outside of the Commons. Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner angrily protested that the speaker had kicked Poièvre out for his performance, calling it a “disgrace.” McKinnon accused Poièvre of “aggressively courting” white supremacist extremists and refusing to retract his “extremist” statements.
Incidentally, the Bloc Québécois and the National Democratic Party congratulated the speaker for ousting Poilievre. Conservative leaders could return to the House of Commons on Wednesday. These events usually go away. This time, I feel like the House is going to be angry for a while.
