Canada's Liberals Say Creation Of Anti-Corruption Committee Could Open Door For Election

TORONTO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th October, 2020) A Conservative Party proposal to create an anti-corruption committee to investigate the WE Charity scandal could open the door for a confidence vote and subsequently an election, Government House Leader Pablo Rodriguez said in a letter.

Last week, the Conservative Party announced that they back the inception of an anti-corruption committee to look into the awarding of a sole-source contract worth hundreds of millions of Dollars to the WE Charity to administer a government-sponsored student volunteer program.

"Mr. O'Toole put forward a blatantly partisan proposal," Rodriguez said on Monday. "This proposal, were it to pass, would raise serious concerns about whether the House of Commons continues to have confidence in this government."

A vote of non-confidence in the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by opposition parties could possibly trigger an election.

The looming threat of a snap election comes amid Liberal Party filibusters in the finance and ethics committees, where opposition parliamentarians are seeking access to unredacted documents related to the doomed Canadian Student Service Grant. The Conservative Party has slammed the filibuster and the decision to suspend parliament and committees in August as an attempted "cover up" of wrongdoing on the part of Trudeau.

Charlie Angus the ethics critic for the New Democrat Party (NDP), which struck a deal with the Trudeau government to support the Prime Minister's Throne Speech and avert an election last month, extended an olive branch to the Liberal Party, offering a deal to only provide evidence that Trudeau and his spouse did not receive payment from the embattled charity so that the committee could conclude its investigation.

Trudeau has incurred intense backlash after multiple investigative pieces revealed close ties between his family and government 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.