Minutes before time ran out on Monday’s budget vote, two senior Conservatives swooped into the chamber claiming their electronic voting app wasn’t working and declared they wanted to vote against Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first budget.
MPs Andrew Scheer and Scott Reid, the party’s House leader and caucus chair respectively, could have voted “nay” in the chamber just moments before. But they didn’t cast their votes until all of their colleagues had finished.
While video footage appears to show two people standing behind curtains on the Conservative side of the House of Commons as the count was underway, Scheer’s chief of staff told CBC News Tuesday it wasn’t him or Reid.
After it became apparent the budget was going to pass thanks to two NDP abstentions but also two other Conservatives sitting this one out, Scheer and Reid told the Speaker they wanted to vote against the budget but couldn’t due to technology troubles inside Parliament. The Speaker allowed it.
While diametrically opposed to the Liberal budget, sources say Conservative Party top brass don’t want an election so soon after the last one — especially as polls suggest Carney is generally the preferred pick for prime minister over Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
There was uncertainty about what the New Democrats were going to do with this vote as the party’s MPs were tight-lipped about which way they would go.
Scheer and Reid not voting would have given the party some breathing room if they had to unilaterally stop the government from falling on this vote, which, like all major financial bills, was considered a matter of confidence.
But Scheer’s chief said he always intended to vote remotely because he was at a meeting of the subcommittee on international human rights about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.
That meeting ended at 6 p.m. — before the 6:45 p.m. scheduled vote — but Scheer was tied up with other matters in the meantime, the chief said. Scheer only raced into the Commons to cast his vote after the technology failed, she said.
Reid did not respond to a request for comment.
David McLaughlin, a former chief of staff to Brian Mulroney, said it appears the Conservatives “manufactured that majority for the government.”
“It was a little dicey but they can claim a victory of sorts because whoever was in the House voted unanimously against it,” he said in an interview.
The last-minute votes prompted some jeering from Liberals on Tuesday. Scheer, Reid and other Conservatives can openly support the government on the next confidence vote or “perhaps take a walk behind the curtains,” said Public Works Minister Joël Lightbound.
A Conservative source said Poilievre and his team are laser-focused on a vote of another kind right now — the party membership’s leadership review in January, which will decide whether he stays on after falling short in the last federal campaign.
Weeks before Monday’s high drama, the Conservatives were having conversations with the NDP and Bloc Québécois about how this vote would play out and there were some discussions about abstentions to stave off an election.
In the end, NDP MPs didn’t have to abstain on this vote for it to pass — the budget would have squeaked by based on how Conservatives alone voted, or, in this case, didn’t vote, despite Poilievre’s vigorous opposition to the document and its $78-billion deficit.
MP Matt Jeneroux, who abruptly announced his intention to resign in the new year after he was rumoured to be crossing the floor to the Liberals like his former caucus colleague Chris d’Entremont, was absent.
Another Conservative, MP Shannon Stubbs, is on medical leave. While there’s remote voting in this post-pandemic era, she couldn’t do that given her condition, according to her office.
A Conservative spokesperson said Stubbs had serious jaw surgery and is wearing an apparatus that is inhibiting the facial recognition software used to verify an MP’s identity when voting outside the chamber.
Stubbs has faced a flood of criticism online after her non-vote, which helped the government survive, especially after a social media video posted to her account earlier Monday surfaced. Stubbs’s staff said it was recorded before her medical procedure and she “strongly opposes Carney’s credit card budget.”
Some Conservatives have since come to her defence.
“No one is more loyal and dedicated to our Conservative team,” said MP John Barlow.
“She’s a fighter who takes no prisoners,” added former MP Damien Kurek, who stepped aside so Poilievre could reclaim a Commons seat. “She would have loved nothing more than to vote down this disaster Liberal budget.”
In a post on X after the vote, Poilievre said Carney’s budget will “drive up the cost of living on every Canadian — on food, on homes and on everything else Canadians buy.”
“Conservatives voted no tonight on this costly credit card budget that gambles away Canada’s future,” he said, leaving out any mention of the two who didn’t.
The Liberals were pleased with the end result. Government House Leader Steve MacKinnon declared Tuesday “the minority Parliament is working.”
Carney says it’s ‘a good day for Canada’ after budget narrowly passes Monday vote
“Parliamentarians decided to put Canada first and that’s really what matters,” added Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne.
Carney himself called it “a good day for Canadians.”
