Over the past day-and-a-half, everyone and their dog has had an opinion about just what Maryam Monsef was thinking when she stood up in Question Period and said that the electoral reform committee hadn’t done their job in bringing forward a recommendation and then tried to use the Gallagher Index equation as a way of ridiculing their work. And when she stood up in QP to apologise yesterday no less than five times, the opinions got more and more “sure” that everyone knew just what was going on.

So the PMO sends Monsef out to say a bunch of obnoxious things, then makes her apologize for the things they told her to say. #thethickofit

— Andrew Coyne 🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇪🇲🇩 (@acoyne) December 2, 2016

And while I am always happy for a Thick of It reference where I can get it, I’ve seen a lot of tweets over the day that have basically posited that Monsef is this vacuous cipher for the PMO, and that she’s just reading the lines assigned to her, and it bothers me. Why? Because Monsef isn’t vacuous. Quite the opposite in fact, and while she may stick to her lines in QP and have all the sweetness of saccharine, she’s very deliberate in the way she responds (as she articulated to John Geddes here). So yes, she prepared for Thursday’s QP and had some lines prepared, including the one about the Gallagher Index, but she also knew that she was going to be bombarded with a bunch of ridiculous questions from the opposition parties who overread the conclusions of the report. Did she go too far? Yes, absolutely, and I think she recognised that. But she’s also been handed a really shit file to manage, and she’s got a tonne of work to do in stick-handling it.

Essentially, the Liberals made a foolish promise that they probably knew they couldn’t keep, but they also managed the expectations around it somewhat with promises for consultation that gives them an out. It was also just one item in a comprehensive reform package, most of the rest of which is well on the way of being implemented, but they went and oversold this one item and now they need to figure out how to break it without looking like they’re breaking it for self-interested reasons. And no, I don’t think they want to break it just because the current system worked out for them – rather, they realised that the alternatives are not actually better for our system in general. Part of how they can hope to break it is to show that the other parties are unreasonable and no consensus can be reached, and to a great extent, the electoral reform committee report demonstrated that, but Monsef went and overshot and her own party members got hit with friendly fire as a result. And now they need to keep up the charade a while longer, but this is something that they need to smother, but they can’t look like that’s their plan, and Monsef has a hell of a job trying to manage that.

Oh, and for everyone who asserts that this is just the PMO pulling the strings instead of the minister, I’m less convinced. I’ve had conversations with people who’ve worked in Queen’s Park who now work here, and their assessment is that this actually is government by cabinet – the centre is not stickhandling everything, and I’m not convinced that Monsef, as junior as she may be, is just a puppet like so many Harper ministers were. The evidence just isn’t there for me.

Meanwhile, Colby Cosh offers some more context for that whole Gallagher Index nonsense, while Paul Wells manages to better interpret Monsef’s reaction and the real reason why the committee failed, which has to do with the referendum question. Andrew Coyne mystifyingly tries to equate the issue with free trade, while again insisting that Monsef is just a cipher for the PM.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau says that governments need to turn economic anxieties into hope lest we get a Brexit/ Trump movement here.
• The Chief Electoral Officer says there aren’t enough details to even begin working on an electoral reform referendum.
• Jim Carr says it wasn’t a warning or a threat when he said that violent protests could be met by police or even the defence forces.
• Carr also says that as part of their investment strategy, they may look at loosening restrictions on state-owned enterprises owning stakes in oil sands operations.
• Status of Women minister Patty Hajdu called Kellie Leitch’s peppery spray proposal offensive.
• Visa restrictions on Mexico have been lifted, and we’ll see if there is the same flood of refugee claimants.
• An announcement on a procurement for fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft is imminent, and may take the head off of the fighter jets.
• CBC doubles down on their petty cheap outrage story, trying to make it a scandal that Senators rent from the Art Bank.
• Susan Delacourt questions the wisdom of those also-rans in the Conservative leadership doing it for “positioning,” looking at where Liberal rivals wound up.

Odds and ends:

Although he’s actually been sitting since his appointment, new Supreme Court Justice Malcolm Rowe had his official swearing-in yesterday.

The current judges of the SCC. #SCCJudges pic.twitter.com/syzpARNhv8

— Supreme Court of Canada (@SCC_eng) December 2, 2016