TORONTO – Ottawa starts again exactly as the last legislature ended: accusations, controversies, poisons. The climate of institutional bon ton lasted very little, time to elect the new Speaker of the House – with the reconfirmation of the Italian Canadian Anthony Rota – and to listen to the historic Speech from the Throne of the Governor General Mary Simon – the first in English, French and in the Inuit language – and in the Canadian parliament we returned to the old good manners. 

Today Erin O’Toole attacked Justin Trudeau hard. “Family budgets are being stretched thin… Canadians are being priced out of their apartments, priced out of their neighbourhoods… And what is Justin Trudeau’s response? Instead of standing up for Canadians, we have a Prime Minister who always puts his own needs ahead of yours,” O’Toole said.

“Family budgets are being stretched thin… Canadians are being priced out of their apartments, priced out of their neighbourhoods… And what is Justin Trudeau’s response? Instead of standing up for Canadians, we have a Prime Minister who always puts his own needs ahead of yours,” O’Toole said.

O’Toole himself confirmed on Tuesday that the Conservatives will not vote confidence in the government on the Speech from the Throne, with the NDP still undecided but oriented to follow them and with the Bloc Quebecois which, instead, at this juncture, will allow the liberal executive to survive.

“Other countries are launching ambitious plans to develop innovation, lower taxes, reduce bureaucracy to allow their economies to march at full capacity, and we from our prime minister see nothing. It took us two months to get back to work after these unnecessary elections called during the pandemic.”

The liberal leader’s response was not long in coming. “Our government is currently focused on the economy and the cost of living front, along with climate change and reconciliation. All these themes should also be focused on. Instead he is committed to guaranteeing exemptions for his parliamentarians, which does not really make sense”.

The prime minister then once again puts his finger in the wound in a story that is truly paradoxical and that is destined to undermine the stability of O’Toole’s leadership within his own party in the event that it is not resolved quickly.

The Tory leader, in fact, confirmed that an unspecified number of Conservative MPs have not been vaccinated – as required by the new House of Commons rules – but that they are in possession of a valid medical exemption. This position has been fiercely contested by liberals for two reasons. The first is that from a statistical point of view on 100 thousand people the medical exemption in the population concerns from 3 to 5 individuals and, it must be remembered, that there are 119 conservative deputies: the statistics tell us there should be no exemptions.

In addition to this, O’Toole was also attacked on the merits: his defense clings to the right to privacy of individual deputies with respect to their medical condition: but the request made by the liberals and other opposition parties concerned only the number of unvaccinated deputies and not their identity.

In short, O’Toole has slipped into a dead end, in this attempt made by the Conservatives on several occasions to go and seek consensus in the varied Canadian no vax galaxy, an operation that miserably foundered in the last elections due to the presence of Maxime Bernier, the only politician openly no vax.

In the meantime, the government has confirmed that in the coming days all the measures promised during the election campaign will be deposited in the House of Commons and for some of these a fast track will be guaranteed to reach an approval in a short time. In particular, the measures activated to help Canadian families, businesses and workers in this fourth wave of the pandemic. There remains the issue of the need for the support of at least one other party for the final approval of these bills.