Earlier yesterday, we blogged about the Liberals' somewhat-divided communications strategy after their regular morning caucus meeting.

In House votes later yesterday afternoon, the divisions continued.

The vote in question was about extending the deadline for the environment committee's review of Bill C-311, a NDP Private Member's Bill called the Climate Change Accountability Act.

The NDP did not want this extension -- it wanted the bill to move to the next stage, in the hopes that it might become law, and compel the government to action, before the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change in December.

The Bloc agreed with the NDP, but the Conservatives did not. It was the Liberal caucus that couldn't seem to make up its mind when the time came.

In the end, 42 Liberals voted with the government side to extend the committee's work for another 30 days. Like they'd said they would earlier.

But even before the vote, people began whispering in reporters' ears that the Liberal caucus wasn't unanimous in this view -- and they were right. 14 Liberal MPs voted with the NDP and the Bloc to move things along.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was not in the House for this vote.

Why the competing strategy? Well, on the one hand, a minority of Liberals evidently wanted to look like they supported action on climate change, and voted against a further delay. But on the other hand, more of them were said to be reluctant to support a bill that would allow the NDP to claim any edge or victory as far as championing environmental causes in Parliament. The fact that enough of them voted in favour (so the extension would pass) ironically made it easier for a few of them to take their policy stand and vote against, without any serious consequences. Get it?

Yeah, I'm a bit confused too. Maybe they just genuinely couldn't agree on this one. The Liberal Whip told one of our producers that in the end he decided to let his MPs vote as they chose.

You can read the NDP's take on what went down and why here.

But in the meantime, watch this video of the House vote. For time and file size purposes, I've joined the proceedings after the Conservatives finished voting in favour. (They all stuck together... surprise, surprise.) The video begins with those Liberals who decided to vote with the Conservatives on this environmental bill. Ironically, Stphane Dion's name is called first.