Greg Fergus should resign from his position of House Speaker after expelling Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre from question period April 30, says former NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, calling the move “blatant partisanship.”
“This was not only precipitous. For me it was manifestly, obviously partisan, and I don’t come at that lightly,” said the retired politician-turned political analyst during CTV’s Power Play program on April 30.
“It was an awful performance by Speaker Greg Fergus. He just lost control, … Fergus should do the right thing and step down.”
Mr. Poilievre’s removal from the House of Commons on April 30 came after he called Justin Trudeau a “wacko prime minister” for supporting B.C.’s previous drug decriminalization policy.
When Speaker Fergus asked him to withdraw his “unparliamentary language,” Mr. Poilievre said he would “simply withdraw and replace” the word “wacko” with “extremist” or “radical.”
Speaker Fergus subsequently ordered Mr. Poilievre to leave the House of Commons. The entire Tory caucus followed their leader out.
The NDP and Bloc Québécois supported the Speaker’s decision, with Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet congratulating Mr. Fergus for showing “common sense.”
Mr. Mulcair noted that despite the support the Speaker received in the House from his own Liberal party as well as the NDP and the Bloc, expelling the Conservative leader calls his credibility into question.
“He made a huge mistake. When Poilievre said ‘I simply withdraw,’ he should have ended it there,” Mr. Mulcair said. “Instead, he went after the leader of the Opposition. Unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Mr. Mulcair, who was leader of the Official Opposition in the House between 2012 and 2015, said he defended Mr. Fergus when his impartiality was called into question last year.
Mr. Fergus, wearing his Speaker robes, made a video tribute last December to the outgoing interim leader of the Ontario Liberals at a party event. The video was recorded in his office, causing many opposition MPs to question his impartiality in the House.
The Conservatives and Bloc called for him to resign, but a January vote in the House allowed Mr. Fergus to keep his job as Speaker.
Debate Avoidance
NDP House leader Peter Julian has a different view from his former colleague, saying Mr. Poilievre showed “profound disrespect” to Parliament.“He refused to simply respond to what is a very normal direction from the Speaker, elected by all parliamentarians,” Mr. Julian told reporters on April 30.
“I’ve withdrawn myself comments that have been inappropriate. He made an inappropriate comment and refused to withdraw it.
Liberal House leader Steven MacKinnon said what transpired was a “disgrace.”
“A disrespect for our institutions, a disrespect for the Speaker,” Mr. MacKinnon told reporters on April 30.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett said that Mr. Poilievre did withdraw the comment and that the Speaker is applying “two sets of rules” when dealing with the Conservatives and the governing Liberals.
“It’s not the job, of course, of the Speaker because he is a Liberal to protect a prime minister whose whacko policies are putting people’s lives in danger,” he told reporters on April 30, referring to the Liberal government’s drug policies.
Lisa Raitt, former minister of transport under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, said the chaos in the House of Commons could have been avoided altogether if Mr. Trudeau had not tried to circumvent the drug decriminalization debate.
“The prime minister simply would not answer any questions around a very serious matter with respect to … open drug use in British Columbia and a request from the premier of British Columbia to deal with this decriminalization,” Ms. Raitt said during the Power Play segment.
“The prime minister, instead of addressing the issue, decided to attack the leader of the Opposition, and then we end up with the leader of the Opposition booted out of the House as he is just trying to bring up the issues around drug decriminalization.”
“The Liberals were absolutely trying to duck the debate and the Speaker helped them,” she added.
Mr. Poilievre repeatedly pressed the prime minister on drug decriminalization during question period on April 30. He asked the prime minister why Ottawa has not responded to requests from the B.C. government to amend decriminalization and place restrictions on possession in certain locations.
B.C. on April 26 announced its plan to change course on drug decriminalization and asked Health Canada and the federal government to modify the policy to stop the use of drugs in public places.
Mr. Trudeau answered briefly, calling the matter a health-care issue.
When Mr. Poilievre pushed the prime minister again on the issue, claiming that drug overdose deaths in B.C. had increased by 380 percent, Mr. Trudeau switched gears. He accused the Tory leader of consorting with extremist crowds, saying Mr. Poilievre shows “us exactly what shameful spineless leadership looks like.”
Mr. Mulcair pointed out that Mr. Poilievre using the term “wacko” to describe the prime minister is no worse that Mr. Trudeau’s choice of words.
“If you were to do a scale of one to 10, of bad words, wacko comes in at about two-and-a-half, somewhere close to spineless,” he said.
He said Mr. Poilievre was trying to debate a “big national issue that has cost tens of thousands of lives,” but the prime minister “wouldn’t answer any questions” and seemed more intent on trying “to Scotch-tape him to some American shock jock conspiracy theorist.”
There’s always “frustration” in parliamentary debates, he added, referring to his own time in the House of Commons when Stephen Harper was prime minister.
“I had epic set-tos with Stephen Harper but I could never imagine for one second that [then-Speaker] Andrew Scheer would stand up, point at me, and throw me out of the House. It just doesn’t fit. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”
