MPs have already stayed up all night to vote continuously on more than 250 motions and could be forced to keep voting into the weekend. The voting started around dinner time on Thursday.
The House is ruling on fiscal estimates, so every vote is a vote of confidence, keeping Liberal MPs close to their seats. A loss of confidence could trigger an election.
But that doesn't mean they always have to be paying attention. Some MPs have brought in books, magazine and iPads to keep themselves awake. One rookie Liberal MP was caught dancing to Lionel Richie's All Night Long while Heritage Minister Melanie Joly and other cabinet colleagues performed YMCA.
Parliament will sit 'until they do the right thing'
Conservatives have maintained the disruption is warranted, given the government's refusal to let the prime minister's national security adviser, Daniel Jean, testify at the national security committee about the briefing he gave journalists during Trudeau's India trip.
"We need the same rights that journalists had, and if he doesn't give it to us through this vote tonight, we are going to show that Parliament is going to sit until they do the right thing," Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin O'Toole said Thursday.
Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin O'Toole, shown earlier this month, said Parliament would sit until the Liberals 'do the right thing' and allow national security adviser Daniel Jean to testify about the Atwal affair. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)
Jean suggested to reporters covering Trudeau's trouble-plagued trip last month that rogue factions in the Indian government had sabotaged the prime minister's visit.
That included the embarrassing revelation that Atwal — a one-time Canadian Sikh separatist extremist convicted of attempting to murder an Indian minister during a visit to Vancouver Island in 1986 — had been invited to two events with the prime minister during his India sojourn. The revelation came just as Trudeau was attempting to convince Indian officials that his government supports a united India and does not condone violent extremism.
The Privy Council Office said the government has offered a briefing on the India trip to Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.
The filibuster will result in a hefty overtime bill for the Commons, since its services must be available whenever the chamber is sitting.
Those services include security, cafeteria, shuttle buses, messengers, translation, transcription, printing, maintenance and tech support.
Travel disruption
After about three hours of voting, Liberal MP Rob Oliphant asked that the Commons mobilize additional staff so that the young pages in the chamber would not be "run off their feet all night."
Back in 2011, when the NDP conducted a 58-hour filibuster against the then-Conservative government, Tory MP Candice Bergen — now the party's House leader — pegged the cost of keeping the Commons running at $50,000 an hour, although her own government disputed that figure.
Whatever the overtime costs for Commons employees, they don't include the cost of rearranging travel plans. Many MPs, particularly from far-flung parts of the country, normally return to their ridings on Thursday nights. Cabinet ministers also tend to fan out across the country on Fridays to make announcements or attend events.
Transport Minister Marc Garneau had to cancel his plans to travel Friday to Lac Megantic, Que. — site of the 2013 rail disaster that levelled half the downtown area — where he was scheduled to discuss rail safety with the Quebec Federation of Municipalities.
'A human shield'
Trudeau has stood by his national security adviser, saying Jean is a professional, non-partisan, veteran public servant who only says what he knows to be true.
But the Conservatives maintain Jean was used by the PMO to deflect attention from a public relations disaster.
"When the prime minister uses a senior and respected civil servant as a human shield to get out of a bad political scandal, that's terrible," said O'Toole.
He questioned how one could argue that Indian factions could have been responsible when a Liberal backbencher, Randeep Sarai, has taken responsibility for getting Atwal on the guest lists and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has called the incident an "honest mistake."
"Both of these scenarios can't be true and the fact they brought up the India conspiracy theory also is a blight on a good relationship with an important country," O'Toole said.
