After voting with the Liberals against a Conservative non-confidence motion in exchange of “gains for Quebec,” BQ leader Yves-Francois Blanchet has threatened to “force” an early election next week if his demands aren’t met.
Blanchet’s threat to the government for an early election relies on the government’s response to a private member’s bill sponsored by a BQ MP, Bill C-319, asking the government to raise the income that Canadians aged 65 and older receive from Old Age Security pensions by 10%.
The bill would also “raise the exemption for a person’s employment income or self-employed earnings that is taken into account in determining the amount of the guaranteed income supplement from $5,000 to $6,500.”
When the BQ first announced its willingness to form a coalition with the Liberals, it also asked for more autonomy for Quebec over its language laws and the number of immigrants admitted into the province.
The Conservatives, NDP, and Green Party have said they are voting for the royal recommendation of the BQ-led bill, with the Liberal government being the only holdout.
During a press conference Wednesday, Blanchet gave the Liberal government a deadline to support the private member’s bill to raise the OAS funding for seniors or face a potential election.
The BQ originally gave the government until Oct. 29 to capitulate on the OAS file.
“The government did not have the spine to provide us Canadians and Quebecers with a clear answer,” Blanchet said. “They just want to get some more time and to keep not deciding about anything; they might hope that they will go further than Oct. 29 – they will not, so they have until a few days from now to go on with the Royal recommendation, and if they do not, we will start as rapidly as next week to speak with other oppositions to get ready to go into an election.”
He said that if it becomes clear that the Liberals are not going to support the bill before the Oct. 29 deadline, he will begin preparing with opposition parties to trigger an election next week.
Blanchet noted the NDP’s support of the bill, implying that the NDP would have known that supporting the motion could lead to a non-confidence motion in the House of Commons if the government didn’t play along.
Some liberal MPs, such as Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, have expressed their unwillingness to support the member’s bill, saying it will cost taxpayers too much and is not the way to get things done in the House of Commons.
“We’ll see what the block does. But we felt that what they were proposing was extremely expensive and socially regressive,” Guilbealt said in a scrum while leaving parliament Wednesday. “I mean, a retired couple of two making $150- 160,000 a year would receive more than a single retired woman who makes 30,000 a year, so it makes no sense.”
He said the government is committed to helping seniors but the private members bill was not the way to do it.
“This was not the right thing to do, and it’s not the right way to do it, either, an opposition motion that would result in $16 billion more spending,” he said. “That’s not the way to do things. I’m happy to work with the Bloc to see what we could do, but that’s not the way.”
During Question Period Thursday, Labour and Seniors Minister Steven Mackinnon avoided answering a BQ question about Bill C-319. Instead, he opted to highlight the Bloc’s supposed failure to deliver for seniors and spoke about the government’s dental care package.
“Every time we put forward measures to help Quebec’s seniors, the Bloc Quebecois votes against them,” he said.
The Conservatives said they would support the motion, as seniors have been hard-hit by the Liberal government’s mishandling of the economy.
“There’s no doubt that seniors in Canada have had it very tough. Because of Justin Trudeau, inflation and interest rates are taking such a big bite out of their pensions,” Opposition House Leader Andrew Scheer said in parliament Wednesday. “Conservatives are always on the side of seniors and want to preserve the power, the purchasing power, of their pensions by eliminating putting an end to the inflation crisis that Justin Trudeau caused.”
The next federal election is scheduled for October 2025 if an early election isn’t called.
