Roundup: Trying to help with attendance

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The Conservatives have become very preoccupied with Justin Trudeau’s attendance in Question Period of late, which is one of those particular political cudgels that annoys me on a couple of different levels. On the one hand, I’m annoyed at the PM for not taking it more seriously and showing up in order to be held to account, as our system of government demands; on the other hand, I get annoyed when the opposition plays cheap politics with this because they are just as guilty, with their own leaders having fairly poor attendance records to match. It’s especially precious that the Conservatives are so concerned about Trudeau’s attendance as Stephen Harper’s was abysmal, and by 2014, you were lucky if he might show up once a week. Might.

Huffington Post crunched the numbers and found that Trudeau has missed 58 percent of QPs within his first year, while Stephen Harper missed 46 percent in his first year. Mind you, that was his first year, and that thrice-weekly attendance fell off pretty quickly. Trudeau has had a fairly punishing international schedule, which is part of his job – but we’re seeing a number of instances, especially lately, where he is in town and not attending, or that he counter-programmes another event to take place at the same time as QP, which again annoys me because it shows that he’s not taking the responsibility of being held to account seriously. Sure, it’s great that you want to show kids that that coding is a good life lesson, but there are other hours in the day where that might be more appropriate, and not when you should be answering questions for your government’s actions.

But the petty politics that the opposition are playing around this are frustrating. Offering to move Question Period to 4:15 in the afternoon – or any other time to “help” the PM make it – is lunacy considering how disruptive it leaves the rhythms of operation on the Hill, with committee schedules where witnesses have flown in across the country, with the media’s ability to keep the production cycle of news shows. I’m not saying that this is a big deal, but I’m not sure that this is the way to address the problem of non-attendance, particularly when other leaders can hardly deign to make their own appearance most days.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau avoided a walkout at the AFN meeting by having Jim Carr apologise for his protester comments and by announcing legislation to create an Indigenous Languages Commissioner.
  • Cabinet looks set to extend our military training mission in Ukraine, while they are asking for additional assistance with cybersecurity.
  • The Senate human rights committee wants the government to pick up more slack on refugee resettlement and not forcing it all onto the provinces.
  • Senators have found a compromise solution to get more of the new independent senators onto committees without waiting for a prorogation.
  • Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs hijacked immigration committee proceedings to force John McCallum to listen to concerns about the Vegreville centre closure.
  • France has awarded Brian Mulroney its highest civilian honour.
  • Maclean’s talks at length to Philippe Lagassé about My Democracy and why the questions are structured the way they are.
  • The Privacy Commissioner plans to take a look at the MyDemocracy site because of its requests for demographic data that could run afoul of some privacy laws.
  • It looks like Chris Alexander, Peter MacKay and Steven Blaney approved contracts over $10000 for “coaching services” to help their staff find new jobs post-election.
  • It was the “bilingual debate” in the Conservative leadership race, and almost all of the French was uniformly terrible.
  • Brad Trost says he would have been chanting “Lock her up” had he been able to attend that Edmonton rally, insisting that it was only meant “symbolically.”
  • Kellie Leitch put out a five-point plan to get pipelines built that includes locking up agitators who resort to vandalism – but that’s all pretty much current law.
  • Chantal Hébert excoriates Chris Alexander for the “lock her up” appearance, and declares him unfit for leadership.
  • Susan Delacourt looks at the shine starting to come off Trudeau after his bad couple of weeks.
  • Paul Wells looks at how Trudeau is trying to channel the frustrations that leads to populism into more productive uses.
  • My Loonie Politics column this week shows why the recommendations in the electoral reform committee report are utterly untenable.

Odds and ends:

Andrew Scheer told a “cute story” about staying with his parents in Ottawa – until his expense claims told a different story and he admitted he was “exaggerating.”

Paul Wells has written his own electoral reform survey.

For iPolitics, I covered Monday’s anti-Islamophobia event on the Hill.

One thought on “Roundup: Trying to help with attendance”

  1. What I find sad about this CPC debate is how English Canada gets the message that Bilingualism is not important and French Canada is a joke. Re-enforced by candidate who despite years in politics simply do not speak French.

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