The Speech from the Throne left MP Dr. Robert Kitchen feeling “extremely disappointed”, and he has been involved in the debates and votes that have followed in the House of Commons.
“The prime minister prorogued the government back in the middle of August, and gave the impression he was going to come up with some amazing and inspiring speech. Ultimately the question was, he prorogued Parliament for this?” he said on Monday, after being in the Commons all day, and was about to take part in the first of the votes.
The Conservatives and the Block Quebecois have both stated there is nothing they could support in the Throne Speech, while the NDP have been “waffling” in their support, said the MP.
In his view, this speech just rehashed the same old thing Trudeau brought forward before, and Kitchen felt he could also give the same speech in response that he gave last year, “and that’s just embarrassing to have a prime minister promote so much hype and then do nothing, and how he’s going to keep doing the same thing, spending more of Canadian taxpayers’ money.”
For the agriculture sector, the MP noted that farmers were only mentioned twice in the speech, and the oil and gas sector was not mentioned in any way at all, nor was there any mention about helping Canada’s veterans.
To appease the demands of the NDP and earn their support for the Throne Speech, the Trudeau government has put forward Bill C-2 and C-4, which will provide for some of the wishes of the NDP, such as providing for sick leave for two weeks. These are not confidence votes, noted Kitchen, with one vote on Monday night and another scheduled for 2 a.m. on Wednesday to get these bills through before the confidence votes are held on the Speech itself.
“The government wouldn’t agree to what we wanted, as we’ll only have four hours debate,” said the MP.
The Bloc and the Conservatives have each put forward amendments to the Throne Speech, which are confidence votes, and then the vote on the speech itself is also a confidence vote. Kitchen noted that if the NDP is satisfied with the concessions the Liberals are giving them, they will support the speech and give the Liberals enough votes so that it won’t fall and force a snap election.
The MP pointed out that Trudeau kept mentioning the “Team Canada” approach to the economy, but in his view, rather than the whole team playing together, they are only playing their first line and not putting the second, third or fourth lines out at all.
COVID is having an impact on how all the voting is going to take place, noted Kitchen, as only a certain number are allowed in the House of Commons at any particular time. For the Monday evening vote, Kitchen had to be on his computer in his office, and had to stay on line for the entire time the vote took place. His vote counts like those in the House, but only if he is always present at his computer voting in a Zoom-like format in conjunction with the members in the House.
Before Monday, there was only a test run done where a vote that would normally take about 10 minutes to do will last 45 to 50 minutes to complete.
“It’ll be interesting to see how this one goes,” he said as the bells sounded, giving the MPs a 30-minute notice of the impending vote in the House.
