Why did Flaherty miss that vote on C-45?

In amongst the dust-up in the House of Commons following the Speaker’s ruling Wednesday on whether or not the final concurrence vote on C-45 Tuesday night was valid, one question lingered: Why did the finance minister miss the vote in the first place?

After New Democrat House leader Nathan Cullen made the Opposition’s case that the vote ought to be perhaps re-cast, Government House leader Peter Van Loan offered some vague language regarding Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s absence for those few minutes the night before.

“We had been through the process of time allocation and of setting up the votes to take place that evening on the very multiple motions in amendment put forward by the opposition, which took a considerable amount of time and which did cause inconvenience to members of the House that made it impossible for the minister of finance to be there for the entire duration,” Van Loan said.

“There are people who have legitimate issues and reasons why they cannot be here at all times for such votes. We recognize that people face those issues from time to time,” he continued.

It’s not clear what Van Loan meant by this.

Outside in the Foyer afterward, reporters asked Cullen why he thought Flaherty wasn’t there.

“I don’t know why. Absolutely, we’re open to an explanation but there hasn’t been one forthcoming,” Cullen said. “It was a strange moment because if you watched the vote last night, the Conservatives sort of left in shifts. It wasn’t his shift. He was meant to be there and he wasn’t. I don’t know why not. I’m not casting any aspersions as to what else he was doing.”

UPDATE: 12:07 pm

Kathleen Perchaluk, Flaherty’s press secretary, provided the following comment on the question:

    “Minister Flaherty was proudly present for the vast majority of votes to support the report stage of the Economic Action Plan 2012. But, like other Government Ministers and MPs, he was part of a system where members on the Government side were shifted out of the Chamber for a period of time. The final votes was one such rotation. Unlike the NDP, the Minister is focused on the economy – not games and distractions.”

UPDATE: 1:29 pm

A note on Flaherty’s office’s response/explanation for his absence. According to Perchaluk, Flaherty left because he was part of the rotation of MPs that “were shifted out of the Chamber for a period of time.” This was the system the Conservatives employed and had gone on all night, with set groups of MPs taking a break. The MPs were grouped vertically, so to speak, with columns from front benches to back benches going off at once.

Which means that if Flaherty was just part of a rotation, those MPs who sit behind him ought to have also been absent from the final vote on Tuesday night. But, aside from Diane Ablonczy who was also not recorded as having voted, all the other MPs in that row/column were present.

Flaherty was not recorded to have voted in the final two amendment votes, either.

I asked Perchaluk for further explanation on the rotation system, which apparently also involved breaks for individuals.

“There were rotations that included group and individual member breaks,” she said, and added in a follow-up email that, “Minister Flaherty was in the government lobby during the final vote on his rotated break.”

Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Colin Horgan