Scandal, outrage and success: How a raucous 2024 unfolded in the House of Commons

Take a look back at all the parliamentary antics that dominated the House of Commons this year.

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OTTAWA—If one was searching for a single day to sum up the year in Canada’s Parliament, look no further than the penultimate sitting of 2024. There was political scandal, procedural outrage, and the word of the day, according to OpenParliament , was “confidence.” Indeed, Chrystia Freeland ’s stunning departure from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet on Dec.

16 set off a firestorm of questions about the Liberal government’s future. It also meant there was no finance minister to deliver a statement in the chamber after introducing the fall budget update , meaning opposition parties couldn’t formally respond to the document, either. “We are seeing an ongoing level of the dysfunction and the failure of all political parties to stand up for Canada at a time of uncertainty,” veteran NDP MP Charlie Angus said earlier in the day.



“It is really like watching kids in a sandbox throwing sand at each other as the tsunami comes.” It was an apt metaphor; this year, the House of Commons was largely reduced to a talking-point-slinging, insult-hurling, filibuster-filled affair. Perhaps that was unsurprising in a chamber full of Liberals disenchanted with their leader, Conservatives grappling with accusations of muzzling, and New Democrats grasping for an identity in a post-deal world that propelled Parliament into minority chaos.

Here’s a look back at what happened in the Commons, 2024 edition. No overview of the year’s parliamentary shenanigans can get underway without a nod to the man in charge: House Speaker Greg Fergus. The longtime Liberal MP was elected to the Speaker’s chair in 2023, and by the end of that year, Fergus was embroiled in controversy for recording a partisan video inside the Speaker’s office while wearing his traditional robes.

(Why was that a no no? The gig is meant to be strictly impartial.) By the spring of 2024, Fergus had found himself under fire again: partisan language targeting the Conservatives was used to promote an event featuring him in his riding. He again dodged opposition calls for his resignation after the Liberal party took responsibility for the mistake.

Opposition Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois are renewing calls for Liberal MP Greg Fergus to But the gaffes didn’t do much to help Fergus maintain control of an increasingly raucous Commons. The proof? The Speaker uttered the word “colleagues” 1,214 times in the chamber this year, a term Fergus almost exclusively used to admonish MPs and restore decorum. It wasn’t actually the Speaker — or any of his deputies — who rose to speak the most in the Commons this year.

That title goes to Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux, who also serves as the parliamentary secretary to Government House Leader Karina Gould. The Winnipeg North MP spoke a whopping 2,006 times in 2024. As for who spoke the least, former Liberal cabinet minister Omar Alghabra holds that honour, rising to speak only once near the end of the year.

(Alghabra has said he will not run again in the next federal election.) What about the federal party leaders? Here’s that ranking: Discourse in the House of Commons this year was laced with insult-laden slogans, uncouth gestures, and accusations of hostility. Conservative MPs used “Maserati Marxist” and “Liberal lickspittle” to blast the Singh, who tried to get even by calling the Tories “billionaire bootlickers.

” The Speaker and his deputies chastised MPs for comparing their colleagues to animals, calling them “snowflakes,” repeatedly throwing out the word “hell,” and referring to individuals or political parties as liars and dinosaurs. Last month, Immigration Minister Marc Miller told Poilievre, in reference to the Conservative leader’s refusal to obtain security clearances, to “grow a pair.” Freeland, on an earlier occasion, accused Poilievre of “wearing more makeup” than her.

NDP MP Daniel Blaikie, in one of the final comments he ever made in the Commons before leaving federal politics, also apologized for making a comment about “the tongues of certain Conservative members that I feared would get stuck in the backside of their leader,” though the original remark and its context is not logged in the parliamentary record. Then, in late November, NDP and Conservative MPs got sucked into a decorum debate, with both sides denying allegations of harassment and intimidating behaviour and, in the case of the Tories, rejecting accusations of drinking during a late-night sitting. Two weeks later, MPs expressed outrage again when Conservative MP Scott Reid admitted he “flipped the bird” to Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen.

Over the course of the year, six MPs were ejected from the chamber due to their conduct. In mid-April, NDP MP Rachel Blaney was the first to receive that honour, after the Conservatives accused her during question period of twice telling them to “shut up.” Blaney said she only said “shush” the second time, and refused to withdraw her comment.

Two weeks later on the same day, Conservative MP Rachael Thomas, and her leader, Poilievre, suffered the same fate. Thomas had called Fergus “disgraceful” for his handling of a rowdy question period, and was kicked out despite withdrawing her comment, which the Speaker did not hear at the time. Minutes later, Poilievre was expelled for calling Trudeau a “wacko prime minister” and refusing to fully withdraw the remark, prompting Conservative MPs to follow him out of the chamber en masse.

Poilievre made the statement during a fiery exchange with Trudeau during question period. The final ejections occurred Nov. 19, when a trio of Conservatives — Michelle Rempel Garner, Michael Barrett, and Rick Perkins — each got the boot.

Rempel Garner was expelled for refusing to withdraw a comment calling embattled former cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault a “fraud” amid questions about his family’s ancestry and his former business partner. Barrett wouldn’t withdraw the words “cocaine Randy,” referring to Boissonnault’s former company sharing a post office box with someone detained in a drug bust. And Perkins was kicked out for not fully withdrawing a comment in which he called Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault “corrupt.

” If you’ve made it this far, here’s your holiday miracle: things were, surprisingly, accomplished. GC Strategies partner Kristian Firth stood “before the bar” in the House of Commons Wednesday, Sure, the House of Commons saw ArriveCan contractor Kristian Firth called “before the bar” in the chamber, a rarely-invoked rebuke that has only been applied to two private citizens in the last century. And yes, Parliament’s September return coincided with a pair of byelections, one of which saw the Liberals again cast out of a stronghold.

The collapse of the agreement — which allowed Trudeau to operate as if he had a majority — does Many moments marked that month, from the dissolution of the NDP’s parliamentary pact with the Liberals, to the NDP leader’s viral confrontation of a West Block heckler, to the launch of a months-long (and ongoing) filibuster from the Conservatives about a scandal-plagued and now-shuttered green technology funding agency. And while it’s true that the Tory-led privilege debate gridlocked almost all legislative business, at least 30 government, Senate and private members’ bills became law, including legislation that: Above all, the most moving moments in Parliament tend to be the ones where partisanship is shed. That happened earlier this month, when the country’s Olympians and Paralympians streamed into the House of Commons to celebratory applause, uniting all in a rousing chorus of “Go, Canada, Go.

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