With Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair both in South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s memorial, and Justin Trudeau elsewhere, it was shaping up to be another episode of Ask Paul Calandra. David Christopherson led off, shouting his way through a script about the ongoing ClusterDuff affair and whether the PM was telling the truth. Jason Kenney, the designated back-up PM du jour, assured him that the Prime Minister has been since May 15th, as the ITO showed. Nicole Turmel carried on in French, wondering about the role of Harper’s staff not telling him about what was going on. Kenney, cool and collected, stated that Harper was repeatedly clear that he was disappointed that his staff did not inform him about it and there have been staffing changes in his office. Marc Garneau led off for the Liberals, bringing up Senator Gerstein’s role in the affair, and wondered if the government would ask Gerstein and Michael Runia to appear at Ethics committee. Kenney reminded him that such a question had nothing to do with government administration. For his final question, Garneau asked about the “undeleted” Perrin emails, and wanted them tabled for public consumption. Kenney reminded him that PCO regretted their error, and that the PM wasn’t involved.

Round two started off with Alexandre Boulerice returning to the previous statements that Harper had made which had since been contradicted by the RCMP (Calandra: Harper insisted on cooperation and solicitor-client privilege waivers), Chris Charlton asked about Gerstein’s initial consideration of repaying Duffy from party funds (Calandra: The party didn’t repay his expenses but did assist with legal fees), Charlie Angus asked about the rules around deleting emails (Calandra: Those emails were not deleted, but held in a different file) and then whined that senators were attacking the NDP and wondered who in the PMO was responsible for coordinating them (Calandra: We understand how frustrated the people of Quebec are with their NDP representation). Lysane Blachette-Lamothe tried to ask about Senator Degenais, and when the Speaker smacked down that question as having nothing to do with government business, she carried on reading her script and got smacked down yet again. Charmaine Borg asked about the HRSDC privacy breach that those Perrin emails were being held in relation to ongoing litigation around (I missed the response — apologies). Carolyn Bennett asked about former PMO staffers who knew of the ClusterDuff payment (Calandra: The PM had no knowledge of what was going on), Kevin Lamoureux asked when those former staffers would be called to testify under oath (Calandra: The RCMP are looking into this and only find Wright and Duffy are under investigation). Olivia Chow and Hoang Mai asked about the recent revelation of unreported derailments (Raitt: TSB is an arm’s length agency and CN needs to work with them), and Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet and Murray Rankin asked about CPP expansion (Sorenson: Raising CPP costs while the economy is still fragile would cost jobs).

Round three saw questions on changes to EI eligibility, the “quotas” on EI fraud cases, the treatment of veterans and injured soldiers, the delays to the small arms treaty, tourist visas in advance of the upcoming Pam Ann — err, Pan Am games, Aboriginal skills programming, “plundered” EI funds, and the collection of user data by telecom companies like Bell.

Overall, it was about time that Speaker Scheer started putting his foot down on ridiculous questions about senators or Senate business — and it also highlighted the inability of MPs like Blachette-Lamothe to ditch her script and ask a question off the cuff once the question was ruled out of order. Because really, you would think that two years into the current parliament that MPs could either grasp what “government business” entails, or that they can ask questions without scripts. Apparently not. It was even less becoming for Nathan Cullen to call a point of order after QP to whine to the Speaker that he wasn’t allowing them to use QP to land political points against the Senate. Perhaps it’s time every MP got a refresher on ministerial responsibility and the administrative responsibilities of government. And while he’s at it, perhaps the Speaker should also put an end to those back-bench suck-up questions that attack opposition leaders as also being outside of government business.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Greg Rickford for a black suit with a white shirt, purple and black plaid tie and purple pocket square, and to Paulina Ayala for a belted black dress with a grey line pattern and a black jacket. Style citations go out to Lynne Yelich for a leopard print jacket and skirt with red furry collars and cuffs, and to Larry Miller for a black suit with a yellow shirt and green tie.