LILLEY: Trudeau continues to fiddle with his future while Canada burns

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Prime Minister’s Office staff have been told to show up in person in the office in Ottawa come Monday morning. The PM’s agenda says only that he will “participate virtually in a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Canada-U.S. Relations.”

Is Justin Trudeau getting set to resign on Monday? Will he prorogue Parliament?

The truth is that we don’t know and we won’t know until Trudeau starts speaking if he goes before the cameras and microphones on Monday. At this point, we don’t know if Trudeau will actually make any announcements to kick off the work week, but there is plenty of speculation.

The Globe and Mail reported late Sunday that Trudeau would announce his resignation as Liberal leader before a caucus meeting on Wednesday that is slated to take six hours. There has also been speculation that Trudeau will try to announce his resignation as Liberal leader, but then stay on as PM until a new leader is picked, perhaps even staying on as prime minister until after Canada hosts the G7 Summit in June.

There are practical considerations that may get in the way of that, chief among them the ability of the government to keep functioning.

Right now, the federal government is financed through March 31, but not past that date. Extending government programs past March 31 would require a new vote in the House of Commons “granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration.”

That means that the likelihood the Trudeau government could extend a prorogation past March 31 is unlikely. In fact, to keep the government functioning, the House would most likely need to return by mid-March at the latest to pass a spending bill to keep the government functioning.

They don’t need to pass a budget, just a spending bill.

With all three opposition parties vowing to bring the government down, that means that without a new deal with the NDP or Bloc, they would face certain defeat. So, in essence, a long Liberal leadership race is off the table; it needs to be a quick leadership race or the Liberals need to face voters with Trudeau in charge.

Now, there is a world where Trudeau doesn’t resign and tries to stick around. If that is the case, then he needs to prorogue Parliament before the Commons public accounts committee meets on Tuesday.

If the public accounts committee begins its deliberations on Tuesday on the question of confidence in the government and Trudeau has not prorogued, things could get dodgy. One of the issues to be considered around prorogation is that there are no matters of confidence before the House of Commons.

While all three opposition parties have said while speaking to the media that they will vote down the government, the record shows that the parties voted confidence in the government last month. If the committee meets to discuss a non-confidence motion, that carries more weight than a media statement and could change the view of the governor general.

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We also have the precedent of the attempt to prorogue the British Parliament in 2019 being declared illegitimate by the courts. That could happen in Canada with the Conservatives willing to head to the court to overturn any move they see as illegitimate.

Bottom line: Trudeau needs to act in one direction or the other quickly. He either needs to prorogue and then resign or simply prorogue to buy himself more time. Those are his personal political considerations, but sadly things are much more dire as a country.

We are facing an incoming U.S. administration that wants concessions and that can sense weakness from a great distance. The Trudeau government is nothing if not weak and nothing Trudeau will do in the coming days will improve our situation.

Other than calling an election and allowing a new party and government to take over.