With Stephen Harper off making an announcement in Lac Mégantic, we were guaranteed that it was going to be yet another episode of the Paul Calandra Show for QP today. Would he bring up his father’s pizza parlour? Would there be a homily about the lessons he teaches his daughters. Add to that, the only leader in the House was Thomas Mulcair, which promised to make for a rather lopsided day. When QP started, Mulcair returned to his former mode of solilioqusing, and wondered lengthily about why the Prime Minister couldn’t take responsibility. Paul Calandra got up and praised the leadership the Prime Minister showed in his conduct, and that the documents showed that he didn’t know. Mulcair brought up statements regarding the Prime Minister approving actions, thus implicating him in a cover-up. Calandra offered much the same in response. Mulcair then wondered why a senator would require the PM’s approval to repay his own expenses, but Calandra responded with the allegation that Mulcair sat on a bribery allegation for seventeen years. Mulcair wondered why nobody else lost their jobs if they were involved, but Calandra reiterated the alleged bribe story. Mulcair’s final question got cut off for unparliamentary language, and the Speaker moved on. Ralph Goodale was up for the Liberals, and asked about the “good to go” statement. Calandra shrugged it off and carried on battering at Mulcair. Goodale brought up the sentiments of this affair in the riding of Brandon in his follow-up, which gave Calandra an opening to batter the Liberals about a panoply of their ills. For his final question, Goodale brought up the interference in a Senate committee proceeding, but Calandra decided that returning to the days of the Sponsorship scandal was the way to go.

Round two started off with Chris Charlton wondered what allegation the Prime Minister was aware of (Calandra: 17 years!), Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe wondered why the PMO felt that they could get involved in a Senate audit process (Calandra: The PM ordered his staff to cooperate with the RCMP), Ève Péclet wondered about the PMO’s former spokesperson’s statement about what the Prime Minister didn’t know (Calandra: 17 years of silence!) and the allegations of Senator Gerstein was trying to interfere with the audit (Calandra: 17 years!), and Charlie Angus wondered about the negotiations between Duffy and the others (Calandra: What Wright did was wrong and he’s paid the price for his actions) and why Benjamin Perrin’s emails were deleted contrary to Library and Archived regulations (Calandra: yet more obfuscation). Marc Garneau wondered why three other PMO staff involved in the affair were promoted to work for other ministers (Calandra: Sponsorship Scandal!) Megan Leslie changed topics and brought up the missed targets for GHG reductions (Carrie: The wings and beer defence), and Olivia Chow and Robert Aubin asked about the protection directive on rail safety (Watson: It sends a clear message that the government agrees that local governments need to know).

Round three saw questions on the possibility of cuts to the size of the Canadian Forces, the stagnation of the veterans burial programme, the attempt to ensure a lack of paper trail on the ClusterDuff deal, a tailings spill into the Athabasca River, the activities of the PM’s deputy chief of staff in Brandon-Souris, contractors on an armoury project in Vancouver, the plan to kill the “going green” strategy by the National Capital Commission, and the closure of veterans affairs offices.

Overall, it was a gong show of a day. Mulcair was no longer the prosecutor, but the dramatic orator who abandoned the short and sharp questions for a return to the lengthy soliloquies which served to drag out the pace and provide little value to the questions. As for the Liberals, they debuted the moniker of the “fraud squad” to refer to the gang in the PMO who were the various supporting actors in the Wright-Duffy deal. One wonders if “fraud squad” will wind up becoming the new QP drinking game.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Shelly Glover for a tailored plum jacket with black trousers, and to Bernard Trottier for a tailored black suit with a crisp white shirt and purple and grey spotted tie. Style citations go out to Jonathan Genest-Jourdain for a grey and brown suit in a windowpane pattern that didn’t look too far removed from a chesterfield, with a light blue shirt and an indigo tie, and to Roxanne James for a black jacket with somewhat gaudy gold embroidered mock-epaulets.