QP: New Chamber, same talking points

Posted on by

On the first day in the new Chamber, everyone was trying to find their way through the new building, yours truly included. After introducing the newest Conservative by-election winner, Andrew Scheer led off, decrying the government’s foreign policy as a “disaster,” listing a number of dubious points to bolster his case. Trudeau stood up, assured Scheer that he would get to his question in a moment, but wanted to take a moment to applaud the work of the men and women who did the hard work of getting the West Block up and running. Scheer repeated his question in French, and read that the government was hard at work to get those two Canadians released and for clemency for the third, while they stood up for the rule of law. Scheer read a wooden question about Trudeau apparently not being good with money, and Trudeau rotely recited his talking points about lowering taxes for the middle class. Scheer read the same question again in English, and got the same response, with an added Stephen Harper swipe included. Scheer insisted that the richest were paying less in taxes than before (not really true), and raised the spectre that the government planned to raise the carbon tax six times more than they stated — also false. Trudeau noted that people are now getting the Canada Child Benefit, and that Scheer didn’t talk about it probably because he wanted to cut it. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and he demanded that the budget include investments in housing. Trudeau responded that their housing strategy was benefiting a million Canadians. Caron demanded more actions like cutting taxes on housing investments, to which Trudeau reiterated that their strategy was making progress. Peter Julian repeated the same question in English, and got much the same response from Trudeau, and when he brought up the big city mayors, Trudeau noted he met with them earlier in the day and that they thanked him for the investments.

Round two, and Alain Rayes, Lisa Raitt, and Gérard Deltell concern trolled about the size of the deficit (Morneau: We said that we would make investments in Canadians, and this has turned into low unemployment and higher growth; Your plan of austerity will harm Canadians). Sheri Benson demanded right-to-housing legislation (Duclos: We have invested $5.7 billion and have helped a million Canadians so far), and Charlie Angus worried about a stage of emergency on a First Nation (O’Regan: Our officials will meet with their leaders tomorrow to develop an action plan for community-led solutions). Pierre Poilievre returned to deficit concern trolling along with a number of disingenuous assertions about cancelled tax credits (Morneau: We made tax cuts for the middle class, and created the CCB to improve their situations; In the fictional world you inhabit, you pretend that things that aren’t true are true). Romeo Saganash demanded the repeal of Indigenous legislation (Bennett: We are working toward this goal), and Hélène Laverdière worried about the dealings with China (Freeland: We are doing a lot, and our absolute priority is the well-being of our the detained Canadians, and we have allies speaking out in support of our position).

Round three saw questions on foreign policy (Freeland: Same answer; That question was full of falsehoods, and our trade relationship with the Asia Pacific is just fine, thanks), rural transport post-Greyhound (Garneau: We are working with provinces on a solution and will be there if they request a cost-sharing plan), municipal infrastructure funding (Champagne: A lot of that money has gone to green infrastructure, transit, and regions), carbon taxes (McKenna: We have a plan that works and makes life affordable, and people will get more back than they pay into it), family reunification spaces (Hussen: We now have 20,000 spaces when it used to be 5000, and we reduced your backlog by 80 percent), southern resident killer whales (Wilkinson: There are three significant challenges, all of which are the product of industrialisation, and we are working to put them back on a path of sustainability), demanding contracts for Davie Shipyard (Sajjan: The Forces had determined that they don’t need a second interim ship), tax returns for Quebec (Lebouthillier: Quebec would need to enter into new tax treaties if they got this single tax treaty), and support for the regime in Venezuela (Freeland: The NDP needs a clear position on this).

Overall, it was a surprisingly lacklustre day for it being such a historic one. While it was expected that it would be all McCallum, all the time, today, there were almost no McCallum questions, and what few there were, they were rolled into a number of overwrought and in some cases outright falsehoods about the government’s foreign policy record. Instead, the Conservatives kept their focus on the deficit and the false notion that the government had “raised taxes” on the middle class, which is a cute way of saying that they cancelled a number of boutique non-refundable tax credits that didn’t benefit a great many of those families. And true to form, Bill Morneau didn’t actually call out the falsehoods until the very end, so they kept getting repeated over and over on the record. The NDP, meanwhile, kept their focus on housing affordability, since that’s what Jagmeet Singh is trying to make his by-election pitch centred on, and they were determined to stay on that message. Meanwhile, one of the new additions to the temporary Chamber is the ability to have more simultaneous interpretation for more than just English and French, and Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette made use of that both in debate earlier in the day, as well as for his backbench lob during QP. We may expect more of that going forward.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Scott Reid for a light grey windowpane three-piece suit with an off-white shirt and a black and red tartan tie, and to Chrystia Freeland for a black dress and long-sleeved jacket. Style citations go out to Rosemarie Falk for a floral and black top under a black jacket, and to Bob Bratina for a maroon suit with a white shirt and red stripe tie. Dishonourable mention goes out to Catherine McKenna for a black shirt and jacket with a yellow-and-black top.

2 thoughts on “QP: New Chamber, same talking points”

  1. Reading your recaps, does it feel like instead of saying how he would solve problems, Mr. Scheer’s message to the electorate is that there will be no problem when he becomes PM?

    • One gets the sense that he thinks he has a magic wand that he can wave to make problems vanish.

Comments are closed.