TORONTO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th August, 2020) Members of Canadian opposition parties are slamming the Trudeau government amid reports that the Prime Minister intends to prorogue parliament until October.
Multiple reports on Tuesday indicated that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will ask Governor General Julie Payette to suspend parliament until October, while he reshuffles the cabinet and continues to deal with the aftermath of the WE Charity affair.
"Our scandal plagued Prime Minister, having already suspended Parliament for months, is going to ask our recalcitrant Governor General who is on the outs with to prorogue said suspended Parliament during the middle of a pandemic with no Federal budget having been tabled," Conservative Member of Parliament Michelle Rempel Garner said in a tweet.
"Harper prorogued to avoid a vote against his [government and] then to delay Afghan detainee scandal. Chretien prorogued in part to avoid the report into the Adscam scandal. Now, Trudeau (who attended the 2010 anti-prorogation protests in Montreal) and WE," Laurel Collins, a New Democrat Party parliamentarian, said via Twitter.
The reports say that Trudeau plans to hold a cabinet retreat in September and will deliver some form of a fiscal update after a new session of the House of Commons commences in October.
Some pundits have also mused whether Payette will grant the request to prorogue, following weeks of damaging leaks about the Governor General, reportedly from the Prime Minister's Office.
Trudeau has incurred intense backlash after multiple investigative pieces revealed close ties between his family and the WE Charity, which was awarded a $670-million sole-source contract to administer a government-sponsored student volunteer program.
Trudeau is the subject of a conflict of interest probe by the Canada's Ethics Commissioner into his relationship with the embattled charity. The ethics probe is the third for the Prime Minister during his five years in office.
