The Bloc is getting into ‘bring down the government’ mode

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OTTAWA — Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet is expected to announce Tuesday morning on Parliament Hill that his party will now be in “bring down the government” mode, a source told the National Post.

Blanchet has been very clear about his demands over the past month. If the Liberals wanted his party’s support until January, they had to “fully” pass in an “irrevocable and non-negotiable” manner a private member’s bill to increase Old Age Security (OAS) benefits for younger seniors (ages 65 to 74) by 10 per cent and a bill to protect supply management from international trade negotiations.

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Bill C-319, the OAS bill, has yet to pass third reading in the House of Commons, and Bill C-282 is before a Senate committee whose chair is in no rush to pass it.

Liberals are divided on OAS, with some saying they support it and others saying it would not help seniors in need. The bill would cost $16 billion over five years.

But the Liberals appeared determined to see Bill C-282 pass in the Senate. International Trade Minister Mary Ng asked Senate committee chair Peter Boehm to expedite the study so it could pass in the Senate and receive royal assent, but he refused, saying it was not the government’s place to tell the Senate what to do.

In both cases, the Tuesday deadline will be missed and the Bloc will now actively work to oust the Trudeau Liberals from power.

“Since the very beginning, we have been playing the transparency card and we have no intentions of backing down,” a Bloc source said. Bloc MPs have also reiterated this commitment on numerous occasions in recent weeks.

At a news conference Monday morning, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he was willing to work with “anyone” who wants to bring down the Trudeau government. Poilievre said in French that he had not discussed any strategy with Blanchet and immediately criticized the separatist leader for supporting the Liberals in the past.

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“Blanchet has delivered nothing to Quebecers. It’s time for the Bloc to work for Quebecers instead of for Trudeau,” he said in Ottawa.

Blanchet did not meet with reporters Monday, but did not hesitate to attack Poilievre on social media.

“He does everything to make people tell him to go to hell — empty slogans, inaccuracies, refusal to reveal his platform, stupid ads … but we wouldn’t do that for him. We would do it for Quebec,” he wrote of a unified vote to bring down the government.

The Bloc’s decision will put the spotlight back on the NDP, which propped the Liberal government up for more than two years with a supply and confidence agreement before tearing up the deal in September.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, however, said Monday that his party was “not looking to trigger an election.”

Singh repeated what he has been saying for more than a month: that his party will decide on every vote or motion that is presented to it. If the NDP believes it makes more sense for Canadians to topple the Liberals, it will vote for a non-confidence motion. But for now, Singh said, that is not the case.

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“We are not afraid of an election, but we are not looking for one,” he said. “A federal election is imminent, for sure. It is just a matter of time,” he added.

A non-confidence motion must be passed by the Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP to bring down the Liberal government. So far, the Conservatives have failed twice to pass non-confidence motions, with the Bloc and the NDP voting with the Liberals.

National Post
atrepanier@postmedia.com

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