While her opposition and government colleagues were rotating food, bathroom and sleep breaks in various shifts, Ms. May drank minimal water to stay hydrated and did not eat anything throughout 156 roll call votes over 23-and a-half-hours. “If I leave to go to the ladies, I will miss a vote,” she said in an email to The Hill Times.
In total, she was awake and passionately fighting against changes to environmental laws for almost 42 hours. In the end, not one amendment passed, and not one comma in Bill C-38, the 425-page omnibus Budget Implementation Bill, was changed. Despite the sleep and hunger deprivation, she said she would do it again.
“I do think this ordeal is worth it due to the outpouring of public support. The movement of concern that has sprung up over C-38 will keep building,” she wrote. “It needed to be done.”
She said to keep herself occupied, and awake, she kept track of each and every vote. In addition, she said she tried to keep up with all emails and tweets. Ms. May is an active tweeter herself. She also had a copy of Noah Richler’s book, When We Think of War, “but was really too busy” to read any of it, she said.
Ms. May said while the mood shifted in the House from “quite pleasant” and “collegial” to increasingly “nasty,” the most difficult part of the marathon voting session was the “over-charged hyper-partisanship and the unwillingness to compromise” amongst Members of Parliament.
“I wish there was a chance to actually explain why each amendment matters, to reason with people. But it is down to whipped votes with no mercy,” she said. “I was on my feet to propose that if the very next motion could pass I would be willing to withdraw the rest of my amendments. That motion would have saved the NRTEE. Instead they shouted me down. Clearly the substance of this act and the many layers of devastation it will cause was never even considered.”
Ms. May attempted to make the deal to not eliminate the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy around 9 p.m., which would have saved two and a half hours of extra voting. MPs did in fact shout her down, and when the Speaker called for order and finally received it, she stood back up to say that she would not be extending the olive branch as other MPs clearly did not want it.
“I am okay, but horrified by the absurd cheering for PMSH [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] on every vote. It really reminded me of [former Conservative MP] Bob Mills’ line [that] ‘a smart person surrounds himself with smart people and a stupid person surrounds himself with cheerleaders.’ (Not saying the PM is stupid, but he sure does not like critic.),” Ms. May wrote in an email to The Hill Times. “It can be quite collegial, but when the PM is in the room, every vote becomes a Conservative Party rally and the mood gets nasty.”
Ms. May said she would use the weekend to recuperate.
At about 1 p.m. last Thursday, NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley, B.C.) held a press conference with Nycole Turmel (Hull-Aylmer, Que.). It was the half-way point of the votes, and Mr. Cullen said his caucus was “feeling good.” Mr. Cullen had earlier moved a motion to suspend the votes for 45 minutes in order to conduct Question Period at 2:15 p.m. The government did not give consent to do so. He criticized the government for not wanting to be held to account.
Shortly after, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty (Whitby-Oshawa, Ont.) emerged from the Commons to say some remarks with Industry Minister Christian Paradis (Mégantic-l’Érable, Que.). He called the voting exercise a waste of time and of taxpayer money. When asked why the Conservatives did not give consent, Mr. Flaherty told reporters: “That’s quite misleading. Last night the opposition wasted what, three, four, five hours? We could’ve started voting on all their amendments yesterday evening, and instead they delayed last night, didn’t start voting till after midnight because of their delay and because of their slow voting nonsense they’re doing today, they’re wasting time. So they eliminated Question Period,” he said. “You waste all that time in the House of Commons last night, and then do this waste of time on the rolling voting, which accomplishes nothing except wasting taxpayers money in the House of Commons—because it’s expensive to run the House of Commons—and then have the nerve to say we want to have Question Period? This is, like, chutzpah, right?”
An hour later, Liberal House Leader Marc Garneau (Westmount-Ville Marie, Que.) also held a press conference in the House foyer, and said the mood in his caucus was “really good” and that Mr. Flaherty’s comments were “crap.”
“I think we will have shown that we have taken our job very seriously as an opposition party. I think Canadians will recognize that. This crap about wasting time and money is crap,” Mr. Garneau told The Hill Times. “If fighting for people’s democratic rights and for democratic institutions, this House of Commons, is considered a waste, then, my goodness, I think that’s totally preposterous.”
Both House leaders said, despite not changing anything in the bill, the marathon voting session served its purpose.
“Our strategy has been to draw attention to try to mobilize Canadians, to make them realize what was going on and to hopefully get them worked up about it. I think it has had some effect. That was some of the questions I’ve been asked. Has it had an effect? Yes, I personally as an MP, I have to have my antennae out all the time. And I have definitely seen people getting very upset about what the government is doing,” Mr. Garneau said. “I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that this is a big issue.”
Mr. Cullen agreed. “Our point is this,” he said. “If we had simply allowed this government to pass this bill without any inconvenience at all the lesson they would’ve taken away and the lesson that Canadians would’ve taken away is that Parliament is less important than it really is. We must hold government to account. That is our job. That is what Canadians sent us here to do, not just New Democrats, but I would argue Conservatives as well.”
The Conservatives had teams of 11, which took turns being on House duty. Every five hours, each team would get a half hour break. At some points, to counteract the NDP’s slow getting up to vote tactic, the Conservatives held back their own MPs from voting. If they knew they could win the vote with some MPs not voting, rows of Tory MPs would not stand in order to move the process along quicker.
Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber (Edmonton-St. Albert, Alta.) wrote on his blog during the roll call voting that he was watching season two of Family Guy to stay awake. At 4:32 a.m. on June 14, he wrote: “We are strategically not voting all of our Members in an attempt to speed matters up—even if only slightly!!”
Outside the House in front of Centre Block one Conservative MP on a break could be overheard talking to a staffer, complaining about having to be there unnecessarily. “This is fucking ridiculous,” the MP said.
Mr. Cullen noted that Chief Government Whip Gordon O’Connor (Carleton-Mississippi Mills, Ont.) was a “good general” in terms of organizing his caucus and not making any mistakes that would cost the government a vote.
“He’s keeping everybody on a pretty short leash,” Mr. Cullen said. “They’re just keeping some of their members not voting at all in an effort to speed up the clock. We couldn’t figure out at first why they were doing this, whole rows would just not vote, but we assume now it just because they’re trying to speed things along, whereas we’re trying to expose as much as we can this action to the Canadian public.”
But it wasn’t all partisanship. House Speaker Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) stood up to acknowledge table officer Pierre Rodrigue who called his first vote. Mr. Rodrigue got a standing ovation.
Mr. Rathgeber also tweeted at 12:48 p.m. last Thursday: “The House has a rare moment of collegiality when Denis Coderre asks for and receives unanimous consent to thank the House of Commons staff and pages for the great job they have been doing in the almost twelve straight hours that we have been voting.”
The House remained in full function throughout the marathon voting. Mr. Scheer took the first five hours in the chair for the roll call votes, from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. last Thursday morning. He and the deputy speakers then took on two hour rotations. Table officers also took on two hour shifts calling out the votes.
Heather Bradley, communications director to the House Speaker, said that everyone pitched in to pull the marathon sitting off.
“There many different services in place to support MPs while performing their Parliamentary functions, i.e.: the clerks at the table, pages, TV crew, sound technicians, Hansard, journals, security, bus drivers, cafeterias,” she said. “They are in behind the scenes support roles.”
Meanwhile, Bill C-38 passed report stage and is expected to pass third reading Monday, June 18. The Senate, whose committees have been studying the content of the bill for the last month, is expected to pass the bill this week before Parliament recesses for the summer.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
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