With less than two hours to go before the budget is released, and a number of the seats in the Commons remained empty, but all three main leaders were present. Thomas Mulcair led off by asking if the Prime Minister would remove the “gag order” from the the elections bill, to which Harper assured him that there was no such provision in the bill, but several sections that require him to act. Mulcair insisted that no, his reading was correct, and Harper assured him that there was no orchestrated fraud in the last election, but for the next election there would be an independent investigator. Mulcair asked about a section of the bill that doesn’t count communication with past donors, and Harper insisted that party fundraising shouldn’t be included as political communications. Mulcair hammered away at that, but Harper insisted that the only cheating was the NDP using union money. Mulcair closed off with a question of robocalls in the last election — ostensibly party business — but Harper didn’t bite. Justin Trudeau was up next, and asked about the lapsing Labour Market Agreements, but Harper insisted that his government invested in job training programmes. Trudeau wanted an assurance that this year, the government wouldn’t start advertising any proposed budget measures that hadn’t yet passed, especially during the Olympics. Harper responded with a jab that the Liberals didn’t have any policies worth advertising.

Round two, and Chris Charlton asked why the new bill would disenfranchise seniors (Poilievre: The voter information cards often contain false information, and there are 39 other means of identification), asking the same about student voters (Poilievre: Student ID are eligible), Ève Péclet returned to the issue of muzzling the CEO (Poilievre: You didn’t read the bill), Alexandrine Latendresse returned to the issues of students and seniors in French (Poilievre: Same answer as before), and Craig Scott asked about the vouching system and its constitutionality (Poilievre: The Neufeld report said those irregularities under vouching were “serious”). Chrystia Freeland and Emmanuel Dubourg asked about high consumer debt (Saxton: You voted against our consumer protection legislation), and Dominic LeBlanc asked why New Brunswick was being punished with delayed infrastructure dollars (Saxton: Economic Action Plan 2014™ is coming!) Don Davies asked about troubling trade numbers (Fast: Our exports went up by 3.2 percent last year), and Sadhia Groguhé asked about skills training fights with the provinces (Bergen: We’re working with the provinces to get people back to work).

Round three saw questions on rail service to Gaspé and New Brunswick being ended, the secret report on postal banking, veterans centre closures, a couple of deportation cases, a sunken boat leaking oil off the coast of Newfoundland, Public Works selling off office plants, protecting Northern resources from foreign ownership, and the objections in Quebec to the labour market development programme.

Overall, it wasn’t a terribly exciting day, with everyone focused on 4 pm’s budget release. That said, there should have been some added caution in the questions related to the elections bill, considering that some of them were straying into party business, and I’m pretty sure that the legislation doesn’t say that the Chief Electoral Officer needs the authorization of the Conservatives as to what he can talk to, as opposed to the authorization of the government (and remember, they are not one and the same).

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to James Bezan for a dark grey suit with a crisp white shirt and green-and-grey striped tie and green pocket square, and to Chrystia Freeland for a fitted short-sleeved purple dress. Style citations go out to Niki Ashton for a burnt orange corduroy jacket with an off-white collared shirt and black skirt, and to Jasbir Sandhu for a black suit with a fluorescent blue shirt and blue striped tie.