Record two-month Canada parliament deadlock paused

The speaker of Canada's House of Commons intervened Monday to pause an unprecedented two-month deadlock that saw conservatives filibuster to try to force Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to release documents they hope would embroil him in a conflict-of-interest scandal.

Almost no business has been conducted during the fall session, and little more was expected, with parliament set to break for the holidays in just two weeks.

However, in a rare move, House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus suspended the stalemate for a few days starting Thursday in order to allow lawmakers to vote on a key spending measure.

Such a whopping impasse had been previously unheard of in Canada, with observers saying it risked leading to snap elections that polls indicate Trudeau would likely lose.

Prior to the suspension, it was not certain whether lawmakers would pass any bills before their departure or spend any of the billions of dollars they are slated to disburse.

The held-up funding includes money for social services, disaster relief and support for Ukraine.

"This is new ground," Wayne Wouters, a former cabinet secretary, said of the deadlock. "I've never seen anything like this: filibustering going on for pretty well the whole fall session."

Wouters noted that previously, an opposition MP would "get up and speak for two days to try and delay things, and then the government got on with normal business."

Treasury Board President Anita Anand said departments were headed for a cash crunch if the spending was not approved before the Commons leaves for its six-week winter break.

"We need the House to function," Anand said.

- Green fund gone awry -

The conflict-of-interest allegations at the center of it all concern a discredited and mismanaged clean technology fund, which deals a major blow to the Canadian leader who has championed such climate action.

The fund was set up in 2001 to support companies developing environmentally friendly technologies.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were awarded over two decades, but after whistleblowers raised the alarm about recent conduct, auditor general Karen Hogan initiated a probe that in June detailed "significant lapses" in the fund's management.

Those included conflicts of interest in 90 projects.

The Trudeau government responded by shuttering the fund, which prompted the opposition Tories to cry cover-up. Police are now investigating.

The Conservatives, after two failed attempts to bring down the Liberals in no-confidence votes in September and October, are demanding access to all related documents -- tens of thousands of pages -- in order to hand them over to police.

The Liberals, and police, say that would distort normal procedures for handling evidence and parliamentary practice.

The leader of the left-wing opposition New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, has bashed both sides for "playing games," but the NDP has refused to help end the filibuster.

"All of the parties seem happy enough to have Parliament do nothing," Dalhousie University professor Lori Turnbull commented. "It's all kind of silly."

Meanwhile, the deadlock and the reasons behind it escaped most people.

"Many Canadians are not even aware that this filibuster (was) taking place. They've got lives to live and families to raise," said Wouters.

It's unclear what happens after the pause.

If the filibuster resumes and the impasse drags into next year, Turnbull said, Trudeau's minority government could be forced to concede it does not have the confidence of the House and call snap elections.

Or it could prorogue before the break, shutting down parliament and starting anew in 2025.

According to Wouters, "it's not quite clear how this will end."