Meeting of Conservative and Liberal MPs over NATO association descends into chaos — and singing

A Liberal effort to remove an Opposition MP from her position as chair of a multi-party parliamentary group descended into chaos Tuesday night, with Tory staffers and at least one MP taking to song in an attempt to register their displeasure and disrupt the proceeding.

Leona Alleslev, a one-time Liberal who recently crossed the floor to join the Conservatives, was the chair of the Canadian NATO parliamentary association going into to Tuesday evening’s meeting.

By the end of the meeting, Alleslev had been replaced by Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

But on the way, a disagreement broke out between the Conservatives and the Liberals about replacing Alleslev and whether the meeting was in order.

Mobile phone footage of the meeting shows several Conservative staffers and Conservative MP Garnett Genuis in the corner singing the lyrics to a number of songs — including Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver — as they held red cups and cradled open binders in front of them.

In one such video given to CBC News, a number of officers with the Parliamentary Protective Service can be seen trying to encourage the staffers to leave.

Watch Conservative staffers break into song:

Conservative staffers break into song to disrupt a meeting that saw the Liberals vote to remove a former Liberal MP who crossed the floor to the Tories from her position as chair of an inter-parliamentary association. 0:26

The meeting was eventually called back to order and a vote was held to install Wrzesnewskyj as the head of the association.

According to the government’s website, the “aim of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association is to increase knowledge of the concerns of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly among parliamentarians.”

Conservative MP Erin O’Toole later took to Twitter to describe the affair as a “farce,” saying that the Liberals called the meeting for no other reason than to “exact political revenge on an MP who had lost confidence in them.”

O’Toole made the point of questioning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s feminist credentials in one of his tweets, noting that Alleslev was a female and former member of the Forces.

With files from the CBC’s Sarah Sears.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/association-meeting-descends-into-chaos-1.4885198