QP: Unhappiness with the proposed privacy commissioner

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Thursday, and not a single major party leader was to be seen in the House — Harper off at the Maternal and Child Health summit in Toronto (where his press minions were kicking reporters out of the various sessions), Thomas Mulcair on tour in Saskatchewan, and Justin Trudeau off campaigning in Trinity—Spadina. Way to show respect for Parliament, everyone! That left Megan Leslie to lead off, brining up the nomination of Daniel Therrien as the new Privacy Commissioner, saying that the author of that legislation shouldn’t then be called upon to critique it. Dan Albas responded, saying that Therrien had a strong record of experience, and that he was identified as the best candidate after a rigorous process. There was a second round of the same, before Leslie turned to the lack of follow-through on maternal and child health goals and the need for reproductive options being made available. Deepak Obhrai praised the initiative for saving lives and decreasing maternal death rates. Nycole Turmel asked the same in French, naming the UN Reproductive Initiative as one of the organizations that the government refuses to fund, to which Obhrai repeated his answer. David McGuinty led for the Liberals, decried the loss of a full construction season due to the poor outlay of the Building Canada Fund. Denis Lebel accused him of misleading the House, and said that six billion dollars of infrastructure funding was flowing. Judy Sgro asked the same and got the same answer, Ralph Goodale quoted figures about how it was affecting municipalities, not that Lebel was swayed, calling the information “false.”

Round two, and Jinny Sims and Sadia Groguhé noted that McDonald’s is launching their own investigation of Temporary Foreign Worker programme abuses, and asked the government to do the same (Armstrong: We have made sure to ensure that Canadians are offered jobs first), Pat Martin decried that temporary foreign workers were being used on a hospital construction site in Winnipeg (Armstrong: you voted against strict measures like a blacklist), Éve Péclet loudly bemoaned the lack of passenger data on government Challenger flights (Calandra: We reduced use of the Challenger jets by 80 percent since coming to power), Dan Harris asked the same in English (Calandra: We’ll stand up for low income and middle income Canadians), Ryan Cleary compared the Conservatives to the Liberals with respect to the improper hirings at ECBC (Rob Moore: That person was fired with cause a couple of names ago), Yvon Godin asked about the same topic in French (Rob Moore: When are you going to pay back the taxpayers for your satellite offices?) John McCallum noted that no company had been blacklisted for abusing temporary foreign workers (Menegakis: You allowed strip clubs and massage parlours to get TFWs and might have been complicit in human trafficking), and Sean Casey asked about the process for the forthcoming second vacancy on the Supreme Court (MacKay: W got advice that Nadon was eligible). Randall Garrison and Rosane Doré Lefebvre asked about CSE keeping personal data on those who communicate with key computer networks (Nicholson: CSE protects Canadians from international terrorists, hackers and kidnappers), before each asked about RCMP suicides and the inadequate assistance for mental health needs (Blaney: You voted against greater RCMP oversight; they have access to all of the help they need).

Round three saw questions on the final text of the European Free Trade agreement, the loss of the temporary small business hiring credit, supply management around poultry being circumvented, those ECBC hiring, the agreement on small arms trade, VIA rail service in Gaspé, and hazardous material being transported by rail.

Overall, it wasn’t a great day yet again, with rowdy MPs, an increased number of personal attacks, and some particularly unsavoury accusations being thrown by the Conservatives as they insinuate that the Liberals were complicit in human trafficking. It just goes to show that this is the time of year that tempers are getting shorter as the temperatures outside get warmer.

Sartorially speaking, snaps to out to Blake Richards for a dark grey suit with a light purple shirt and a dark purple tie, and to Laurin Liu for a sleeveless melon pink dress. Style citations go out to Linda Duncan for a yellow dress with a quasi-Aztec pattern with a reddish orange jacket and to Bal Gosal for a black suit with a pale yellow shirt and tie.