On September 27, 2023, he resigned as speaker due to the honouring of former Waffen-SS "Galicia" Ukrainian veteran Yaroslav Hunka in the House of Commons, triggering the 2023 speakership election.

He won the federal Liberal Party of Canada nomination for Nipissing—Timiskaming in early 2004, defeating rival candidates Susan Church, Hugh McLachlan and Joe Sinicrope with 52% on the second ballot.

[8][9] On June 17, 2020, Rota ordered that NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh be removed from the House of Commons after referring to Bloc Québécois MP Alain Therrien as a racist.

The documents requested related to the transfer of samples of the level 4 viruses from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China and the lab's dismissal of two of its scientists.

Speaker Rota had upheld the principle that the judiciary has no jurisdiction over the operations of the House and that only Parliament can decide how the law applies to its institutions.

The Liberal government subsequently dropped the court application after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an election in August, dissolving Parliament and thus terminating all business before the House, including the orders to produce the PHAC documents.

[13] On September 22, 2023, following an address to the Canadian parliament by visiting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Rota introduced and recognized Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian-Canadian retiree from North Bay, in the parliamentary galleries.

Rota issued an apology two days after his initial statement, saying, "In my remarks following the address of the president of Ukraine, I recognized an individual in the gallery.

Rota apologized to "Jewish communities in Canada and around the world" and accepted responsibility for his action, saying that neither the Ukrainian delegation nor other MPs were aware that he would recognize Hunka.