Tag Archives: Brad Butt

The House of Commons is preoccupied with how to handle MP Brad Butt’s apparent attempt to mislead the House of Commons. Butt, who represents a riding in Mississauga, Ont., told the House during a Feb. 6 debate about the government’s electoral reform bill, that he’d personally witnessed voter fraud. Later, he corrected the record and said he’d witnessed no such fraud. Yesterday, Speaker Andrew Scheer ruled that Butt probably breached parliamentary privilege, but he’d leave it to parliamentarians to decide.

The NDP has attacked the government’s proposed electoral reform for weeks, and they’re calling dirty pool on Butt. This will surely bleed into Question Period, where the NDP will look to squeeze the controversy for all it’s worth.

Perhaps noteworthy questions that will go either unasked or mostly shoved to the end of the daily 45-minutes hate: the government’s relative silence in the case of Mohamed Fahmy, the Egyptian-Canadian journalist held in Cairo on terrorism-related charges; the apparently miniscule corporate taxes paid by large Canadian corporations; and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s insistence that, trust him, the government is acting on clogged railways largely suffocating grain shipments to market.

Who to watch

Pierre Poilievre on electoral reform, likely, though the real target could be MP Brad Butt.