Poilievre writes to GG calling for House recall, confidence vote after Singh declares he's ready to bring Liberals down

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has written to Gov. Gen. Mary Simon, imploring her to "use your authority to inform the prime minister that he must" recall the House of Commons so a non-confidence vote can be held. This move comes in light of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh publishing a letter stating his caucus "will vote to bring this government down" sometime in 2025.

Poilievre told reporters on Parliament Hill on Friday afternoon he was taking this step "so the prime minister can judge whether he stays in power."

Despite indicating he would be asking Simon to "urgently reconvene Parliament," his letter to her does not state that exactly. It asks her to "confer with" the prime minister "to ensure that he understands his constitutional duty."

This latest pressure — coupled with the NDP, after months of being non-committal, pulling out the only pillar of parliamentary support the embattled Liberal government was relying on to stay in power — comes on the same day that Trudeau shuffled his cabinet at Rideau Hall.

He did so alongside Simon, in a bid to inject some stability after a week of tumult, exactly one month before U.S. president-elect Donald Trump takes office.

"The Trudeau Liberals said a lot of the right things. Then they let people down again and again. Justin Trudeau failed in the biggest job a prime minister has: to work for people, not the powerful. To focus on Canadians, not themselves," Singh said in a new letter addressed to Canadians.

"The Liberals don't deserve another chance… No matter who is leading the Liberal Party, this government's time is up," said the NDP leader, not specifying how early into the 2025 sitting this motion moving to defeat the prime minister's Liberal government could be advanced.

Singh first called for Trudeau to resign on Monday, amid the intense chaos of Chrystia Freeland's resignation. That day, more Liberal MPs joined the chorus within caucus calling for the prime minister to resign. In the days since, additional Liberals have added their names to the list angling for a leadership race.

Poilievre made the case on Friday that when you add up the Conservative, Bloc and NDP MPs who are now indicating they've lost confidence in the prime minister, plus the more than a dozen Liberal MPs pushing for a new leader, it amounts to 70 per cent of parliamentarians.

"Justin Trudeau does not have the confidence of Parliament," Poilievre said, pushing Singh to join him in asking Simon to intervene, stating the NDP's pledge to put forward a motion of non-confidence in the next sitting of the House of Commons wasn't good enough.

Asked to comment on the loss of their last remaining dance partner, newly reassigned cabinet minister Steven MacKinnon said on CTV News Channel's Power Play that he had "no idea" what the NDP were up to.

"What has changed in the last six days that has required, all of a sudden, us to change course, to not have a functioning government through the U.S. inauguration, not meet this challenge of the threat of tariffs and the economic consequences of that moment?" he said.

"Mr. Singh, I think, has been a little inconsistent on all of these things, and I think he probably owes it to Canadians to come on here and explain those choices, because we're not playing tiddlywinks here."

MacKinnon added that at this important moment for the country, "Mr. Singh, I guess, wants to put all that on the table right now... I would question that choice."

What happens now?

CTV News has reached out to Rideau Hall for comment on Poilievre's request, though it remains to be seen whether what the Official Opposition leader is calling for could trigger a parliamentary recall.

The House of Commons is currently on a six-week holiday hiatus and is not scheduled to resume until Jan. 27.

Typically, according to the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, "the decision to recall is taken by the Speaker, after consultation with the government and once the Speaker is satisfied that the public interest would be served by an earlier meeting of the House."

"Consultation between the Speaker and the government regarding a recall of the House usually begins with a government request made in writing to the Speaker," reads the parliamentary rule book.  

Though, the Conservatives are taking the position that if Trudeau fails to heed the push, it would be on the Governor General "to act to ensure that he does."

It's the Official Opposition's view that Simon has the right and responsibility to advise the prime minister to seek a test of confidence, whereas the Speaker does not have this right or responsibility.

Ahead of Poilievre's press conference, political strategists were largely coming to the conclusion that the likeliest next step for Trudeau would be prorogation, with the potential for that to make time for a Liberal leadership race.

Noting Singh's declaration made it clear that his party was ready to bring the government down no matter who is leading, Scott Reid, CTV News political analyst and former communications director to then-prime minister Paul Martin, said "the writing is on the wall" for Trudeau.

"It's on the ceiling, it's on the carpet, it's everywhere. And the writing's quickly becoming on the face of every single Liberal across the country, the prime minister can't stay," Reid said. He added that the government "might be able to stretch this out into the end of March, but the political gravity is going to start to hit caucus members, that they are going into an election."

Kory Teneycke, who was Ontario Premier Doug Ford's campaign manager and former director of communications for then-prime minister Stephen Harper, agreed that prorogation is "a likely outcome here."

"This government has everything except time on its side, and particularly if it wants to have any sort of a more broad-based leadership selection process. So I anticipate that we're going to get clarity on the prime minister one way or the other, very soon, and if he's leaving, I think they need the time for the leadership, and they need to prorogue," he said.

Asked his thoughts on Trudeau potentially proroguing, and how that would compare to what former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper did in 2008 when he faced losing the confidence of the Commons, Poilievre said the difference now is instead of proroguing to stop "an undemocratic coalition from taking over," Trudeau would be preserving one.

Singh pivots stance, Bloc reacts

Singh signalling he's ready to pull his support comes months after ripping up his supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberals, but then spending the fall sitting of the House of Commons largely continuing to prop up the Liberal minority government.

In the face of several non-confidence motions presented by the Conservatives, including one using Singh's own wording, the NDP had remained steadfast that they weren't going to play Poilievre's games.

According to Kathleen Monk, a former NDP strategist and director of communications to the late Jack Layton, the NDP had an emergency caucus meeting on Thursday night.

"Obviously, Jagmeet Singh and his leadership came to the clarity that actually, it doesn't matter whether Prime Minister Trudeau is leader or not, that it's time to take this government down and so, yeah, this changes the stakes that we could be in an election much sooner than we anticipated," Monk said.

The pivot also comes just two days after Singh said he wouldn't "box himself in" by committing to help bring down Trudeau's government.

In an interview with CTV's Your Morning with Anne-Marie Mediwake, Singh was asked repeatedly to explain how he's calling on the embattled Liberal leader to resign but won't say he's ready to help trigger an election.

"If there's a vote on the table about retaliatory tariffs to fight back against Trump, versus calling an election in the midst of threats to hundreds of thousands of jobs, I want to make a decision that's in the best interest of Canadians," Singh said on Wednesday.

On Friday, Poilievre said the spectre of Trump's tariffs are all the more reason for Canadians to have their say now.

"The sooner the better. I mean, it's irresponsible for us not to go to an election," he said.

The Conservatives, leading by a safe margin in the polls for more than a year, have been working to bring down the Liberals for months, using most of their opposition day motions this fall to push for a snap election.

Poilievre called Singh's statement a "stunt," with his office noting that the NDP have voted to prop up the Liberals eight times since tearing up their two-party pact.

"Just 11 days ago you voted against a non-confidence motion filled with your own words. Had you voted the other way, we'd be almost halfway through the election now," he noted in a statement issued ahead of his Hill press conference. 

Earlier in the fall, Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet issued an ultimatum to Trudeau: ensure two bills — one intended to boost Old Age Security (OAS) and the other to protect supply management in future trade talks — become law by Oct. 29, or his party would start negotiating with the Conservatives and NDP to topple the government.

The Liberals, however, refused to capitulate to those demands, leading to them losing the Bloc's support. Blanchet then ended the fall sitting pushing for the prime minister to visit Rideau Hall and launch the country into a federal election campaign by the end of January.

In a social media post on Friday, Blanchet wrote that Singh’s letter comes “better late than never.”

There is no scenario in which the Liberal government survives any coming opposition days or budget, Blanchet also wrote in French.

The next fixed election date is Oct. 20, 2025, but with the political ground under the prime minister becoming increasingly unstable, the odds of the next federal election being called early, are rapidly increasing.