You may have heard that there was a bit of a meltdown in the House of Commons yesterday. You may also have heard a bunch of suspect commentary about what it was about, and some particularly dubious ruminations about how noble it was that these opposition MPs were standing up for their rights to examine the Estimates and to ensure that all government spending was properly voted for, and so on. The problem is, is that those sentiments demonstrate that they’ve been taken in by the ruse that this is all related to.

So, to recap: Yesterday the parties were on notice that Government House Leader Bardish Chagger was going to move the motion to start late-night sittings in the House of Commons for the last four scheduled sitting weeks, in order to get bills through and off to the Senate. After all, it’s likely that the government wants to prorogue and have a new Throne Speech in the fall, and it’s better to get as many bills off the Order Paper before that happens. But just before Chagger is going to move that motion during Routine Proceedings yesterday, the NDP’s Daniel Blaikie conveniently stands up to raise a point of order and starts to demand that the Speaker allow them to delete Vote 40 from the Estimates. Vote 40 is related to the $7 billion fund that the government wants to use to get a move on budgetary matters that haven’t made it through proper Treasury Board review yet. The figures are all in the budget, laid out in a table, on how it will be spent. The opposition has decided that this is really a “slush fund” that can be spent on anything (the government is quite insistent that if they spent it on anything other than what’s in the table in the budget that it would constitute unauthorised spending, which is a significant thing). After Blaikie started a lengthy speech about it, the Speaker said he’s heard enough, that the matter is before committee and not the Commons, so it’s not in order. When he tried to move onto other business, Blaikie kept demanding he be heard. The Conservatives joined in. And thus began an eight-minute childish tantrum of shouting and desk banging that drowned out other business, and once that calmed down, endless cycles of points of order regarding whether or not they could hear the motion or the interpretation, and so on. There was no greater principle being expressed or upheld – it was a procedural filibuster. And we know this because they tried other tactics after that one failed, including points of personal privilege over the earlier meltdown, and a concurrence debate on a committee report (which, as Kady points out, is kind of fun to watch because almost no one has prepared speeches for them, so they’re forced to think on their feet, which they should be doing anyway, but whatever).

I should note that I'm a strong supporter of concurrence debates, mostly because they're nearly always filibusters, so few MPs have prepared lines handy, so they're forced to think on their feet. (Otherwise known as "Lamoureuxing it up" .)

— kady o'malley (@kady) May 25, 2018

Procedural shenanigans I’m fine with. It’s a necessary part of Parliamentary democracy. I’m less fine with the infantile tantrum that they threw when they didn’t get their way. That’s the part that needs to be called out for what it was. And I especially resent the fact that you have a bunch of pundit who should know what a filibuster looks like after being on the Hill for so many yearswho were all “They have a legitimate point!” That legitimate point, as meritorious as it may be in a more existential conversation about reform of the Estimates process, was not what this was about, and to treat it as though it was is to fall for the game. I will additionally add that I am especially displeased with the commentary on the Power & Politicspower panel, where pundits who are not in Ottawa and who don’t cover this place got space to ruminate about how the Speaker was acting partisan because the government is on its heels a bit, of that this $7 fund was just like an omnibus bill that they swore they would never use, and nobody pushed back about how bogus this commentary was. (Paul Wells offered the actual take, bolstered by Aaron Wherry, for the record, but regardless). I will reiterate that procedure matters, and it would really help if people covering and commenting on this place understood that.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau received an award from Egale Canada for his LGBT advocacy work, to which Trudeau said that there is still a lot of work left to do.
• Trudeau had a call with Donald Trump to talk about the auto tariff deal, and the fact that Trump’s current argument makes no sense.
• Trudeau’s decision to vote in the Ontario election has at least one Conservative MP melting down. (Of all the petty grievances…)
• The Fiscal Monitor shows that the government is on track to meet their $19.4 billion deficit target for the 2017-18 fiscal year.
• Four military cadets at the Saint-Jean campus have been accused of desecrating a copy of the Qu’ran with semen and bacon. One has already been dismissed.
• The Canadian Forces, meanwhile, are looking to lift the restriction on recruitment from only citizens to those with permanent residency.
• Andrew Scheer’s chief of staff is leaving “effective immediately.” They say it’s amicable and he was supposed to be there to transition, but timing is suspicious.
• Erin O’Toole says that our immigration system is too taxed to accept Rohingya refugees. (This is nonsense, and the few we would resettle have family here).
• Don Drummond examines the fiscal plans of all three Ontario parties. Spoiler alert: He’s not impressed.
• Chris Selley offers a reality check of what the Fords offered when they ran Toronto, and compares it to what Doug Ford is running on now as PC leader.
• Jen Gerson is not keen on what the allegations of Doug Ford’s interference in the 2016 Etobicoke Centre nomination race means for the party.
• Kady O’Malley is getting on the bandwagon that the Commons has too much useless debate and offers some thoughts about the use of time allocation.
• Chantal Hébert suspects that a Liberal loss in the Ontario election will put fear into the federal Liberals, for whom the parties are “joined at the hip.”
• Andrew Coyne gives his assessment of the decision to block the Chinese takeover of Aecon.

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