Emails reveal expensive scramble to get minister home for expected vote on C-14

Federal officials scrambled to book costly last-minute flights in order to bring a cabinet minister back to Ottawa earlier this year in time for an expected vote on the government’s controversial doctor-assisted dying bill.

International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau was attending a conference in Copenhagen when officials at Global Affairs Canada got word the Liberals wanted her back in the House of Commons — and quickly.

“We just received a call from the whip’s office,” a staffer wrote to Bibeau and his colleagues in one of several emails obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

“The Minister needs to be back in Ottawa for a vote tomorrow afternoon. She is to be back for 3 p.m.,” he wrote in the May 17 email, sent at 4:53 p.m.