All parties were prepared to support the aid package, but opposition parties took issue with provisions that would have given the Liberal government unilateral power to spend, borrow and change taxation levels until December 2021. Late Monday evening, the Liberals agreed to drop a clause regarding taxation powers, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy the Conservatives.

The agreement reached Wednesday morning puts a September 2020 end date on the government’s authority to spend on emergency health measures without parliamentary approval. The government also agreed to report regularly on spending decisions to parliamentary committees. “The Liberals shamefully tried to use a public health crisis to give themselves the powers to raise taxes, debt and spending without parliamentary approval until January 1, 2022,” Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said in a statement. “But after hours of negotiation, the government has backed down.”

After days of rapid decision-making, Tuesday’s roadblock made for a strange, unanticipated lull. The House is officially adjourned until April 20 due to the spread of the coronavirus, and just over 30 MPs had been called back to reconvene the House for this emergency sitting — mostly MPs who live within driving distance and ministers who’ve been staying in Ottawa to deal with the crisis.

For hours, they sat scattered about the chamber that normally holds 10 times their number. Several wandered in and out as the hours dragged by, while others chatted in little groups, keeping a healthy distance from each other as they waited for the outcome of negotiations happening outside the House. “What’s going on, Pablo, are we doing this today or no?” Health Minister Patty Hajdu demanded of Rodriguez at one point when he made a brief reappearance.

The unexpected delay was, perhaps, a moment of respite for ministers who’ve had little time to pause. Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne, always animated, told war stories to other MPs about negotiating by phone with foreign governments to bring home Canadians stranded abroad as more and more countries close their airspace. In Peru, which has recently gone into martial law, Champagne said, planes sent to pick up Canadians are now having to land on a military base. “Everything is an issue. There’s nothing that works normally,” he said.

Hajdu chatted candidly with caucus colleagues about the difficulty of scaling up coronavirus testing and getting people to take social distancing seriously. She couldn’t believe people had still been getting on cruise ships even as the virus was spreading around the globe, she said: “For fuck’s sake, people, don’t get on these Petri dishes!”

But as the day wore on, patience wore thin. Shortly after 5 p.m., Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet called a press conference in a room two floors below the House of Commons to express his frustration. He said the parties had agreed to changes on Monday night that should have been good enough. “I do not see a reason for it not to go forward now,” he said.

NDP MP Lindsay Mathyssen, who was representing her party alongside Leader Jagmeet Singh and one other MP, directed her grievances at the Liberals. “Unfortunately, the government has put in other things by surprise that we weren’t expecting that now have to be negotiated, so it’s taken more time than we would have liked,” she said in an interview.

Still, by Wednesday morning things were back on track. After a quick approval in the Senate, the bill received royal assent on Wednesday afternoon. Trudeau spoke to Canadians in the morning, while Freeland and other ministers held their daily briefing at noon, as usual.

But as the government’s crisis routine shifts back into place, it was those hours before the parties reached an agreement that were the most revealing, when ministers had a moment to stop and reflect.

After the pandemic, Hajdu said, everything else is going to seem easy. “I want to socially isolate at home on a lake, but I don’t think I’m going to get to do that,” she told her colleagues at one point. “The world has gone crazy.”

Andy Blatchford and Lauren Gardner contributed to this report.

