The Liberals sharpened their attacks on the Conservatives as the House of Commons returned from its summer break on Monday with the prospect of a snap election looming large.
It’s the first sitting since the New Democrats ended an agreement with the Liberals that insulated the minority government from losing a confidence vote.
Liberal House leader Karina Gould said the minority Parliament will now function the way the it did without the agreement, which is on a vote-by-vote basis.
“I have already been in touch with all of the House leaders in the opposition parties and my job now is to make Parliament work for Canadians,” she said.
“I know that the end of the supply-and-confidence agreement makes things a bit different, but really all it does is returns us to a normal minority Parliament.”
But Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet isn’t sure how long that will last, saying the parties are now taunting each to see who might flinch on matters like the federal carbon price.
“We are playing chicken with four cars. Eventually, one will hit another one, and there will be a wreckage. So, I’m not certain that this session will last a very long time,” Blanchet told reporters on Monday.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre intends to bring a non-confidence motion against the government as early as this week but would likely need both the Bloc and NDP to support it. A similar motion he brought last March failed when both those parties voted against it, along with the Liberals.
Gould said she has no “crystal ball” to say when or how often Poilievre might try to bring down the government.
Poilievre, who has been pushing for a “carbon tax election” for months, reiterated that demand Sunday in front of his caucus while painting a picture of Canada’s future that is so bleak the Liberals denounced him as a fraud.
On Sunday, Poilievre said increasing the carbon price will cause a “nuclear winter,” saying Canadians will be starving and freezing because they can’t afford food or heat due the carbon price.
He said the Liberals’ obsession with carbon pricing is “an existential threat to our economy and our way of life.”
Gould Monday suggested Poilievre’s allegations were unbelievable.
“What I heard yesterday from Mr. Poilievre was so over the top, so irresponsible, so immature, and something that only a fraudster would do,” Gould said.
The Liberals have also accused the Conservatives of dismissing the expertise of more than 200 economists who wrote a letter earlier this year describing the carbon price as the least expensive, most efficient way to lower emissions.
The carbon price currently adds about 17.6 cents to every litre of gasoline, but that cost is offset by carbon rebates mailed to Canadians every three months.
The Liberals have repeatedly pointed to a Parliamentary Budget Office analysis that shows eight in 10 households receive more from the rebates than they pay in carbon pricing, while the Tories note the conclusion from that same analysis, that the carbon price could cause long-term economic harm to jobs and wage growth.
Gould accused Poilievre of ignoring the rebates, and refusing to tell Canadians how he would make life more affordable while battling climate change.
Despite previously supporting the consumer carbon price, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been distancing himself from the policy.
Singh wouldn’t say last week whether an NDP government would keep the consumer carbon price. On Monday, he told reporters Canadians were already “doing their part” to fight climate change, but that big polluters are getting a “free ride.”
Big industry pays the same price per tonne for the carbon price. While consumers and smaller businesses pay it on fuels they purchase, big industrial emitters pay it on a portion of the emissions they actually produce.
The Canadian Climate Institute said earlier this year that by 2030 both carbon pricing systems could cut emissions 100 million tonnes a year, with one-fifth of that coming from the consumer side and the rest from big industry.
Singh said the New Democrats will focus this fall on affordability issues like housing and grocery costs, arguing the Liberals and Conservatives are beholden to big business.
“Their governments have been in it for CEOs and big corporations,” he told reporters Monday on Parliament Hill.
The Liberals said at their caucus retreat last week that they would be sharpening their attacks on Poilievre this fall, seeking to reverse his months-long rise in the polls. Gould’s attack on Poilievre Monday seemed to be proof of that in action.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland suggested she had no qualms with criticizing Poilievre’s rhetoric while having a colleague call him a fraudster.
She said Monday that the Liberals must “be really clear with Canadians about what the Conservative Party is saying, about what it is standing for — and about the veracity, or not, of the statements of the Conservative leader.”
Meanwhile, Gould insisted the government has listened to the concerns of Canadians and received the message when the Liberals were defeated in a Toronto byelection in June, losing a seat the party had held since 1997.
“We certainly got the message from Toronto—St. Paul’s and have spent the summer reflecting on what that means and are coming back to Parliament, I think, very clearly focused on ensuring that Canadians are at the centre of everything that we do moving forward,” she said.
The Liberals are bracing, however, for the possibility of another blow Monday night, in a tight race to hold a Montreal seat in a byelection there. Voters in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun are casting ballots to replace former justice minister David Lametti, who was removed from cabinet in 2023 and resigned as an MP in January.
The Conservatives and NDP are also in a tight race in Elmwood—Transcona, a Winnipeg seat that has mostly been held by the NDP over the last several decades.
There are several key bills making their way through the legislative process, including the online harms act and the NDP-endorsed pharmacare bill, which is currently in the Senate.
