Everything you need to know about the latest logjam in the House of Commons – Nearly all regular activities of the House of Commons are on hold as MPs debate how to address the government’s apparent contempt

**What was this June 10 motion exactly?**

>*On June 10, opposition parties came together in support of a motion brought forward by the Conservatives that called on the government to provide all records relating to the embattled Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC).*

>*SDTC, pejoratively renamed the “green slush fund” by Conservatives, is a $1-billion clean technology fund that is being shut down after a series of controversies and a scathing auditor general report that found serious issues with both the fund’s governance and management of taxpayer dollars.*

>*The motion called for the SDTC records to be sent to Commons law clerk Michel Bédard, who would forward them to the RCMP. To be clear, it’s very unusual, if not unprecedented, for Parliament to order documents to be handed off to a third-party immediately.*

**Why was the government found to have apparently violated the order?**

>*Over the summer, government departments and agencies started providing the requested documents.*

>*Or at least, some of them.* [*As previously reported by the National Post*](https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/government-seemingly-violated-house-powers-on-green-slush-fund-docs-speaker-rules)*, over a dozen government departments and agencies either provided redacted documents or simply refused to comply with the order and withheld some or all their records.*

>*That included Auditor General Karen Hogan, who twice wrote the House of Commons arguing that she could not comply because it could compromise her office’s independence.*

>*When the House of Commons resumed sitting in September, Conservative House leader Andrew Scheer immediately stood up and raised what is called a “question of privilege.”*

>*He pointed out that parliamentary privilege grants MPs tremendous power when it comes to fulfilling their duties. That includes an absolute and unfettered ability to send for documents, he noted. The Bloc Québécois and NDP largely agreed.*

>*Government House leader Karina Gould vociferously disagreed, countering that ordering documents simply to pass them on to the RCMP is not a duty of the House of Commons. Rather, she said it’s a drastic overreach by Parliamentarians and a potential override of Canadians’ Charter right to avoid unreasonable police search and seizure.*

>*Ultimately, the Speaker sided with the Conservatives in this “unusual, novel and unprecedented” case. He found the government appeared to have violated the powers of the Commons and helped Conservatives draft an “appropriate” privilege motion to address the alleged breach.*

>*Scheer’s motion proposed to send the issue to the Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee for further study.*

At this point it seems clear that the House has lost confidence in the government. The only thing left is to make it official.

The amount of gaslighting the Liberals have been doing on this is staggering. They are illegally defying an order of Parliament supported by the CPC, BQ and NDP to turn over documents related to yet another scandal involving the misuse of tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, clearly because they believe those documents contain damning evidence that would be harmful to them. Parliament refuses to move on until they stop breaking the law and fulfill their obligations, which the Liberals have said they will not do.

Those are the facts of the matter. They are not in dispute. And yet somehow the Liberals keep trying to claim this is all somehow the Tories’ fault. And nobody from the media in any of the interviews I’ve seen on it, chiefly with their House Leader Karina Gould, has called them out on this bullshit.