Opposition parties will have to wait at least one more day to cross-examine Prime Minister Mark Carney over what they contend has been a confusing and, at times, internally inconsistent response to the ongoing hostilities in the Middle East — and, more specifically, the evolution of his government’s position on the initial wave of military strikes on Iran launched by the United States and Israel last week.

According to his office, the prime minister has no public events on his itinerary today.

His minority Liberal team is nevertheless ready to roll the parliamentary dice on a high-stakes procedural maneuver aimed at ending a prolonged standoff over Justice Minister Sean Fraser’s proposal to expand the current hate crimes laws to provide more protection for religious and cultural centres, as well as add new prohibitions on hate “propaganda,” including publicly displaying the Nazi swastika and other symbols of hate groups.

Yesterday morning, the government put forward a motion that, if adopted, would not only impose a hard deadline on the committee currently studying the bill to wrap up clause-by-clause review during its next scheduled meeting, but would also preemptively limit the remaining debate on the floor of the House of Commons to a single sitting day each for report stage and third reading.

A few hours into that debate, the Liberals served notice that they were prepared to invoke closure to force a vote on the motion, which, as is always the case in a minority setting, would require the support of at least one other party — or, alternately, four opposition members — to succeed, although the very fact that the Liberals have given notice suggests that the government is confident that it has the cross-aisle backing needed for it to pass.

If it does, MPs would have until the end of the sitting day to debate the pros and cons of the government’s proposed timeline to deal with the hate crimes law before it, too, goes to a vote.

Also on the radar: Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu hits the West Block Foyer alongside her Ontario counterpart, David Piccini, to share the details of new federal funding to “support workers in Ontario affected by tariffs and global market shifts,” with Ontario’s natural resources minister Mike Harris and associate minister of forestry and forest products Kevin Holland also expected to be in attendance. (12:30 p.m.)

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his party’s transport critic, Dan Albas, head across the river to an unnamed location in Gatineau, Que., for a mid-morning press conference on “interprovincial trade.” (10 a.m.)

Back in the precinct, one-time CBC News host Travis Dhanraj is promising to “name names (and) present facts about what went on” at the public broadcaster during what will likely be a highly-charged back-and-forth with CANADIAN HERITAGE members as they kick off a self-initiated investigation into the “state of the journalism and media sectors.”

Also on the witness list: HonestReporting Canada executive director Mike Fegelman, as well as representatives of the Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec, Freshet News, Friends of Canadian Media and New Media Canada. (11 a.m.)

Elsewhere on the committee circuit: Representatives of the Canadian Cattle Association, Canadian Pork Council, Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters and Les Éleveurs de volailles du Québec, along with Brazil-Canada Chamber of Commerce director Paola Saad, offer their respective and shared perspectives on Canada’s relationship with the South American trading bloc known as MERCOSUR during back-to-back presentations at INTERNATIONAL TRADE. (11 a.m.)

PROCEDURE AND HOUSE AFFAIRS members explore the “current state of civic resilience in Canada” with Democratic Engagement Exchange director John Beebe, Resilient Societies founder Maiwand Rahyab and MASS LPB principal Peter MacLeod. (11 a.m.)

ON AND AROUND THE HILL

With just one day to go before a critical vote on her backbench bid to close what she contends are “loopholes” within the current arms export rules, New Democrat MP Jenny Kwan teams up with representatives of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, Oxfam Canada, Palestinian Youth Movement and the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council to highlight the “urgent need for the legislation,” as well as its “impact on human rights and public policy related to the 2019 Arms Trade Treaty.” (10:30 a.m.)

Members of Colorectal Cancer Canada, including “patients, survivors, health care professionals and advocates,” converge on the West Block press theatre to promote their ongoing push to “modernize screening policies and align them with emerging scientific evidence,” and, more specifically, their call for “provincial and territorial governments to lower the routine screening age to 45 for average-risk Canadians.” (9 a.m.)

IN THE CHAMBER

Later this afternoon, Conservative MP Blaine Calkins will wind down the opening round of debate on his private members’ pitch to reverse the decision to designate natural health products as “therapeutic products” that are subject to the full monitoring and oversight regulations laid out in the Food and Drugs Act, which is also set to go to a make-or-break second-reading vote tomorrow afternoon.

Before that back-and-forth gets underway, his Conservative caucus colleague Tony Baldinelli will get his first chance to make the case for his call to ensure “dangerous offenders,” as well as anyone “convicted of more than one first degree murder,” to “be assigned a security classification of maximum and confined in a maximum security penitentiary or area in a penitentiary,” as per the summary of the bill.

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