Conservative filibuster costing millions of dollars, say NDP and Green MPs

Some New Democrat and Green MPs say the ongoing Conservative filibuster—which started in the House on Sept. 26 and has gone on every sitting day since—has already cost Canadians millions of dollars in House of Commons resources as legislative business remains paralyzed for another week, though the actual figure is harder to pin down. “We have updated numbers on how much money has been spent by the Conservatives on debating this motion. We have now had 96 Conservative members speak to it, which is about 48 hours if we only account for the Conservative speeches. That adds up to over $3.3-million spent continuing to speak to a motion we could vote on if the Conservatives would just stop speaking to it,” said Green MP Mike Morrice (Kitchener Centre, Ont.) in the Chamber on Oct. 28. When The Hill Times asked Morrice’s office how they came to that figure, they cited a number that was mentioned the previous week in the House. “The Conservatives are filibustering their own motion. The House of Commons costs about $70,000 an hour to run. That is a lot of money being burned up right now, and we are doing absolutely nothing,” said NDP MP Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, B.C.) on Oct. 21. Another NDP MP cited a different number: $1-million per day “Taxpayers are footing the bill for the Conservatives’ $1-million-day filibuster,” posted NDP MP Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) on X (formerly Twitter). However, there is no official number to corroborate how much it costs to run the House per hour or per day. “We don’t have that figure for the daily cost of running the House of Commons. We cannot provide it because too many factors come into play: fixed versus variable costs, salary of employees working on any given day, number of sitting days in a year, etc.,” said Mathieu Gravel, director of media relations in the House Speaker’s Office, to The Hill Times. When asked to clarify their numbers, the NDP pointed to a 13-year-old iPolitics article, while MacGregor said he heard his figure from a previous filibuster. “It was a figure that I'd heard when we were doing our all-night voting marathon back in December. I'd heard other MPs mention it, so it was off the top of my head. It was kind of a ballpark figure, but the fact remains that it does cost many tens of thousands of dollars an hour to run this place in over a day. And right now we've had three weeks of a Conservative filibuster,” MacGregor told The Hill Times. “The taxpayers are footing that bill." Government House Leader Karina Gould (Burlington, Ont.) told The Hill Times that the Conservatives are “completely reckless with taxpayers’ dollars, and they are wasting people’s time obstructing their own obstruction motion.” In response, the Conservatives lay the blame on the governing Liberals. “The Liberals have no one else to blame but themselves. The Liberals have paralyzed Parliament with their $400-million Green Slush Fund scandal,” said Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer (Regina—Qu'Appelle, Sask.), in a statement to The Hill Times. Scheer is referring to the Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC)—a now-defunct green-tech fund that the auditor general found to have approved millions of dollars for ineligible projects and had conflict-of-interests concerns. Commons' costs The House has been in the filibuster since Sept. 26—translating to roughly over 67 hours across 20 sitting days. On that day, House Speaker Greg Fergus (Hull–Aylmer, Que.) ruled that the government’s failure to provide records related to the now-defunct SDTC constituted a violation of parliamentary privilege. The initial motion in June came from Scheer, asking for the release all documents related to SDTC to be turned over to the RCMP. That bill was backed by all opposition parties, and approximately a dozen departments submitted records. But some of those records were withheld or redacted, which prompted Scheer to raise a question of privilege in September and argued the government was in contempt for not fully complying with the House order. Fergus then ruled there was a prima facie case of privilege and recommended the matter be moved to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee (PROC). The subsequent debate has centred on such a motion for the matter to go to PROC, but there has not yet been a closure motion to end debate, and Conservative MPs have continuously been chosen to speak on the matter, as well as to amendments. As for the cost? The only official dollar number available is the yearly price tag it costs to run the House. According to the House of Commons’ 2023-2024 Annual Financial Report, the total net operating expenses for the ‘House Administration program’ was $271.6-million in the last fiscal year. Not including the salaries of MPs, it cost nearly $240-million to pay the salaries of House employees. About $29.8-million was spent on parliamentary precinct operations, which included transportation, printing, and mail processing. Another $32.6-million went towards procedural services like parliamentary publications, the page program, and the management of petitions. The parliamentary cafeterias and restaurant helped the House recoup some of those costs, with $3.6-million in food service sales made during the last fiscal year. For the 2023-2024 fiscal year, MPs sat a total of 117 days in the House. However, some House services continue operating during non-sitting days and the summer, like Hill security. Documents dispute Other activities like Question Period, MPs' statements, and committee work have continued during the filibuster, but debate on other bills have been stalled since the Conservatives' privilege motion takes precedent on House business. Despite legislative business in the House coming to a halt, MPs have been largely beset by other political issues in recent weeks. Those include discord within the Liberal caucus over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s (Papineau, Que.) leadership, the Bloc Québécois' ultimatum on Old Age Security and supply management, and a diplomatic dispute with India. Gould has ruled out prorogation to end the impasse in Parliament, while the Conservatives say they can end their point of privilege debate once the Liberals hand over all the unredacted SDTC documents. “Their refusal to hand over evidence to the RCMP forced the Liberal Speaker to suspend all other government legislation. It can all end today if the Liberals end the coverup and release all of the documents as ordered by Parliament,” said Scheer in a statement. But Gould said the Conservatives' calls for SDTC documents to be given to the RCMP is “completely inappropriate.” “Quite frankly, not fit to lead this country because they are trying to use their extraordinary powers in Parliament to get around due process, to compromise police independence, to get around the Charter rights of Canadians. And it's time for them to stop abusing their power and to allow parliamentarians to get back to work on behalf of Canadians,” Gould told The Hill Times. Waiting for the punchline Now that the deadline for the government to meet the Bloc’s OAS and supply management ultimatums have passed, the party has started talks with other parties to bring down the Liberal government at the first available opportunity. But Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet (Beloeil-Chambly, Que.) said that everybody has forgotten why the official Opposition has stopped the functioning of Parliament. He added that Conservatives were “working against their own intention,” given the Tories need Parliament to resume working in order for opposition MPs to officially vote non-confidence and topple the Liberal government. “If the Conservatives want the government to fall, they will have to stop being childish,” Blanchet told reporters on Oct. 29. When reporters asked NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh (Burnaby South, B.C.) if he would support a motion to end the filibuster, he wouldn’t say. But Singh did lay the blame for the standstill on both the Liberals and the Conservatives. “The Conservatives are in here just playing games, locking up the House, locking up everything. But the Liberals are also to blame, too. At a time when people are hurting, the Liberals just need to provide transparency, and we can move forward,” Singh said to reporters on Oct. 30. “So both the Liberals and the Conservatives are playing games in the House.” Until a solution can be found, the House appears to be stuck in a time loop. Bloc Québécois MP Denis Trudel (Longueuil-Saint-Hubert, Que.), a former actor, likened the impasse to his time setting the pace of a scene. “We have been talking about the same thing, the same motion, just this one thing, for three weeks now,” asked Trudel in French in the Chamber on Oct. 28. “When are we going to get to the punchline? When are we going to vote?” sduch@hilltimes.com The Hill Times 2023-2024 Annual Financial Report Financial Results House Administration Program2023-2024 Net ResultsSalaries and benefits$239.0-millionTransportation and telecommunications$3.8-millionProfessional and special services$15.2-millionRental and licences$6.0-millionComputer and office equipment, furniture and fixtures$12.6-million Utilities, materials and supplies$5.8-million Advertising and printing services$139,000Amortization of tangible capital $10.3-million Repairs and maintenance$5.4-millionTransfer payments to international associations$233,000Net loss (gain) on disposal of tangible capital assets$26,000Other costs$125,000Cost recoveries($23.7-million)Food service sales($3.6-million)Other revenues($68,000)Total net operating expenses$271.6-millionSource: House of Commons

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