It was another day where the two main leaders were again absent from the House today, with Justin Trudeau on the far front bench, and Elizabeth May tucked away in the far corner of the Chamber. That meant that it was up to Megan Leslie to lead off, asking about Pierre Poilievre’s remarks about Harry Neufeld’s report on voter vouching, when Neufeld I himself there was no connection with vouching and fraud. Poilievre continued to selectively read the report and read quotes out of context in order to justify the provisions in the bill. Leslie moved onto the way that Jason Kenney took employment data from Kijiji rather than other, credible sources. Kenney, a little hoarse, listed anecdotes about sectoral skills shortages that need to be taken seriously. Sadia Groguhé repeated the Kijiji question in French, getting the same response. Justin Trudeau was up next, and noted the criticism of the rail grain bill and wondered if amendments would be accepted. Pierre Lemieux touted how great the bill was. Trudeau moved onto the coming 90 percent cut to the Building Canada fund, and insisted that the minister of finance answer. Instead, Peter Braid assured him that they were making plenty of infrastructure investments, neglecting to say that most of the funds won’t be available for years.

Round two, and Jinny Sims asked about the lack of data for labour policy (Kenney: We said that the LMI and StatsCan data isn’t sufficient and your party keeps asking me for temporary foreign worker permits), Nathan Cullen and asked if the new finance minister stood by the labour comments of the previous minister (Kenney: There are regional and sectoral skills gaps), before he and Guy Caron moved onto income splitting (Oliver: It was a good policy for seniors and it could be a good policy for families once the budget is balanced), and Craig Scott and Alexandrine Latendresse returned to the issue of the Neufeld report on voter vouching (Poilievre: We don’t agree with his interpretation but here’s another quote out of context). Ralph Goodale noted the problems with the rail grain bill tabled yesterday, and wondered why a host of things were left out (Lemieux: I wish you had read the bill), and David McGuinty returned to the same questions on infrastructure and the Building Canada Fund that Trudeau asked (Braid: Look at how much we’re investing!) Malcolm Allen and Ruth Ellen Brosseau went back to questions on the rail grain bill, and Alexandre Boulerice and Charlie Angus asked lost data at CRA and about Indian Residential Schools personal data being lost (Findlay: Most lost CRA data comes from misdirected mail which is 0.01 percent of all data).

Round three saw questions on healthcare spending, EI applications, spending on outside lawyers, language requirements for immigration spousal sponsorships, the lack of psychologists on the ground in Afghanistan meaning there was no help for Francophone soldiers, CBSA allowing narcotics to cross the border, homelessness partnership budgets, armoured car regulations, and greenhouse gas emission targets.

Overall, it wasn’t a terribly edifying day, and it was terribly repetitive, not only with the same questions being asked in English and French, but variants of the exact same questions were asked by critics in the second round after the leaders (or their proxies) asked them in the leaders’ round. Once again, it makes for lousy debate, I don’t care what the excuse is.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Rona Ambrose for a black fitted dress and sweater, and to Robert Chisholm for a dark grey suit with a crisp white shirt and a purple tie. Style citations go out to normally snappy dresser James Bezan for a terrible colour combination of a dark grey suit with a fluorescent orange shirt and pocket square and an orange and grey striped tie, and to Ruth Ellen Brosseau for a black dress with a dark tan jacket and a leopard print scarf.