What happened during the fall sitting of the House of Commons, by the numbers

By Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press on December 20, 2024.

OTTAWA – The fall sitting of the House of Commons featured non-confidence votes, plenty of partisan bickering, and very little actual passing of laws. The session that ended Dec. 17 will go down as one of the least productive in Canadian history, and possibly one of the most partisan.

Here’s a look at what happened, by the numbers.

Number of sitting days: 56

Number of days of the Conservative filibuster: 48

Number of bills introduced in the House of Commons: 17 (4 government bills, 13 private member’s bills)

Number of bills that got royal assent: 3 (supplementary estimates, the GST holiday bill and an amendment to the National Parks Act to change land-use rules for the town of Jasper, Alta., after last summer’s devastating wildfire.

Number of attempts to bring down the government with a non-confidence motion: 3

Number of confidence motion votes the Liberals survived: 3

Number of times someone said “axe the tax”: 303 (an average of 5.4 times per day)

Number of times an MP referred to the “common-sense Conservatives”: 183

Number of mentions of “carbon tax Carney,” the Conservatives’ nickname for former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney: 111

Number of times someone talked about what they’re doing “on this side of the House”: 286

Number of times that was said by the Liberals: 209

Number of mentions of “corporate greed”: 42 (NDP said it 29 times)

Number of times an MP declared “I wasn’t even thinking about sex”: 1

Number of times an MP was chastised for referring to former Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault as “cocaine Randy”: 1

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 20, 2024.

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