Brad Butt

Ed Fast is the subject of but the latest complaint

The House of Commons is preoccupied with how to handle MP Brad Butt’s apparent attempt to mislead the House of Commons. Butt, who represents a riding in Mississauga, Ont., told the House during a Feb. 6 debate about the government’s electoral reform bill, that he’d personally witnessed voter fraud. Later, he corrected the record and said he’d witnessed no such fraud. Yesterday, Speaker Andrew Scheer ruled that Butt probably breached parliamentary privilege, but he’d leave it to parliamentarians to decide.

The NDP has attacked the government’s proposed electoral reform for weeks, and they’re calling dirty pool on Butt. This will surely bleed into Question Period, where the NDP will look to squeeze the controversy for all it’s worth.

Perhaps noteworthy questions that will go either unasked or mostly shoved to the end of the daily 45-minutes hate: the government’s relative silence in the case of Mohamed Fahmy, the Egyptian-Canadian journalist held in Cairo on terrorism-related charges; the apparently miniscule corporate taxes paid by large Canadian corporations; and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s insistence that, trust him, the government is acting on clogged railways largely suffocating grain shipments to market.

Who to watch

Pierre Poilievre on electoral reform, likely, though the real target could be MP Brad Butt.

The Speaker finds a prima facie case of privilege

And the Christophersonian filibuster continues

The unsettled matter of Brent Rathgeber

‘I think that’s a lack of respect for the legislative process’

Exactly which Conservatives voted to mutilate that Rathgeber private member’s bill, anyway?

After QP yesterday, NDP Carol Hughes stood on a point of order to lament that Conservative Brad Butt had a made a gun gesture with his hand. A short while later, Mr. Butt apologized.

Here is the text of Thomas Mulcair’s speech in the House yesterday—with periodic interjections from Conservative MPs—on C-45, the second budget implementation bill. He spoke just after Shelly Glover began the debate for the Conservatives.