Tuesday, and most of the leaders were in the House, but Harper was still not back from the G7 meeting at The Hague. Thomas Mulcair led off by bringing up a story on iPolitics about how the Prime Minister used government aircraft for party fundraisers. Paul Calandra responded with a scripted response about how the RCMP won’t let the PM fly commercial and they use the Challengers less than the Liberals did, and by the way, you abuse taxpayers with your branch offices where you have no members. Mulcair shot back that the Government Whip said they followed all of the rules, and asked about those flights yet again, while Calandra whipped up his rhetorical flight. Mulcair tried to ask about spending safeguards in the Senate, and used the justification that the House approves the Senate’s allowance. Calandra noted their efforts to make the Senate more accountable and that they would see wrongdoers published. Justin Trudeau got up for the Liberals, and congratulated the government for the trade agreement with South Korea and when would the details be made available. There was some confusion on the government benches that it wasn’t an attack to deflect, and Erin O’Toole stood to give a talking point about how great trade with Korea would be. Trudeau then asked about vacancy on the Supreme Court, to which Peter MacKay said that they were examining the Nadon ruling and would be acting “post haste.”

Round two, and Nathan Cullen was up to ask about income splitting (Oliver: I’m not tabling the 2015 budget today), about job creation (Oliver: Recited some good news numbers), Guy Caron asked about which spending from Budget 2013 lapsed (Oliver: Now is not the time to discuss the details of the 2015 budget), Alexandrine Latendresse noted Jean-Pierre Kingley’s comments about the elections bill at committee (Poilievre: He also said lots of good things about the bill), the support for the vouching system (Poilievre: The safeguards in place were violated 50,000 times), and Craig Scott asked about the robocall provisions in the bill (Poilievre: This is a new record-keeping requirement). Kirsty Duncan asked about the unemployment rate increasing for new immigrants (Kenney: We have invested $50 million in measures to help these immigrants), Emmanuel Dubourg asked about unemployment in his riding (Kenney: The rate is unacceptably high which is why we are making unprecedented investments), and Scott Brison decried how students are pressured into unpaid work to get work experience but that work is not tracked by StatsCan (Kenney: We are working with StatsCan to get better labour information). Dany Morin and Libby Davies asked about cuts to the Public Health Agency in the face of a possible case of Ebola — which wasn’t actually Ebola (Ambrose: We have funded the highest transfers to provinces in history), and Robert Chisholm and Yvon Godin asked about VIA Rail Service cuts to the east (Watson: Vote for our appropriations if you want to support VIA).

Round three saw questions on Greg Rickford’s energy hedge fund investments (Rickford: I will take any measures the Ethics Commissioner suggests), nuclear disarmament, the budgets for military commemorations coming out of the defence budget, the use of Challenger jets, the loss of personal data at CRA, privacy breaches for Residential Schools survivors’ data, the shrimp fishery, the social contract with veterans, the Canadian journalist imprisoned in Egypt, and on proportional representation.

Overall, Mulcair’s attempt to bring the focus back on Senate expenditures was like an attempt to reclaim thunder that he hasn’t been able to really capture with questions on the Fair Elections Act, but by this point, with no actual connection to government business, it all rang like hollow outrage. And no, the fact that the House votes on the Senate’s allowance does not make it government business because the Senate is not a government department. The Speaker should have disallowed the questions, but didn’t, though he did shut down a government backbench suck-up question about the NDP and their questionable expenses, so at least he enforced the rule somewhat.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Blake Richards for a black suit with a light purple grid-patterned shirt and purple tie, and to Michelle Rempel for a fitted long-sleeved deep blue dress. Style citations go out to Cheryl Gallant for a belted dark teal dress with a bronze lamé jacket, and to Jean Rousseau for a grey suit with a bright teal shirt and a teal and cream striped tie.