And so, the Big Move is complete, and the House of Commons has settled into its new home for the time being. Many MPs were still trying to find their way around the new building, going through wrong doors, coping with more cramped quarters, but they did make some history with the first instances of simultaneous interpretation of Cree in the Chamber thanks to Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette. The changes were all cosmetic as the partisan rhetoric on both sides largely remained the same dichotomy of pabulum from the Liberals, and lies from the Conservatives.

Just what kinds of falsehoods were being peddled? For one, the Conservatives leaned heavily on the notion that the Liberals had “raised taxes” on most Canadians, which isn’t actually true – it’s torque that comes from a Fraser Institute report that considers increased CPP contribution taxes (they’re not), and similarly calls the cancellation of non-refundable boutique tax credits in favour of the (non-taxable) Canada Child Benefit to be “tax increases.” Scheer lied that the government the government’s “own documents” show that they plan to raise the carbon tax to $300/tonne, which is also false, and as Alex Ballingall debunks here, it’s based on redacted documents that point out that higher prices will be needed to meet emissions targets, but don’t say that they are actually planning to do so. And Michelle Rempel also tried to make partisan hay of the fact that the government’s yearly quota of applications for family reunification immigration spaces was open for the space of eleven minutes before it maxed out and tried to equate this as somehow being the fault of asylum seekers who cross the border irregularly – another complete falsehood that Althia rage debunks here, and more to the point, Rempel is engaged in concern trolling – her own government did not prioritize this immigration stream and limited to 5000 cases per year while the Liberals increased it to 20,000. (They also tried to make the small number of spaces “fairer” by attempting to do it on a lottery system rather than one where high-priced immigration lawyers were able to get their files in faster, but that lottery system was abandoned this year). So yeah, the House was mired in bullshit today, but would the government refute most of this on the record? Not really – we got plenty of bland talking points instead that allowed most of these distortions to remain on the record. Slow clap there, Liberals.

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert enumerates the government’s many self-inflicted wounds as the new sitting gets underway. John Ivison notes the same old fear and division being peddled by both sides despite the new digs. Paul Wells makes us feel bad for thinking that things might be different in the new locale. I was on Kitchener Today yesterday to talk about John McCallum, China, and the return of the House of Commons.

Good reads:

• At a big cities mayors’ conference, Justin Trudeau said that uncooperative provincial governments have made it hard to get infrastructure dollars flowing.
• Those mayors also want more federal funding for housing shortages, which they say is partially driven by resettling refugees.
• Trudeau has been door-knocking with candidate Rachel Bendayan for the Outremont by-election, hoping it will presage more Quebec gains.
• US justice officials levelled 13 charges against Meng Wanzhou and formally filed the extradition paperwork.
• Chrystia Freeland says that John McCallum was resigned because he couldn’t hew to the government’s messaging on the Meng file.
• Freeland also said that Canada will host the Lima Group to help come up with solutions to the Venezuela situation next Monday.
• Seamus O’Regan says his senior officials will be meeting with Cat Lake First Nation today to deal with their housing crisis.
• Export Development Canada will no longer fund projects that deal in thermal coal (as opposed to metallurgical coal), but will still support oil-and-gas projects.
• The RMCP say that underreporting of cybercrime makes it harder for them to track it and to “connect the dots” or larger incidents.
• In light of Mark Norman-related revelations, DND insists that it takes Access to Information laws seriously, but “mistakes happen.” Sure, Jan.
• The Senate’s environment committee plans to start work on Bill C-69 next week.
• Former Liberal MP Andrew Kania is looking to contest the Conservative nomination in Brampton South.
• Here’s a look at Jagmeet Singh’s campaigning in the Burnaby South by-election.
• Stephen Harper posted a video that extols the virtues of “populist conservatism.”
• An Ontario court has refused to toss a Greenpeace lawsuit over the cancellation of the cap-and-trade system.
• Jason Kenney has been continually sowing distortions about the impact of carbon taxes by highlighting false stories and bad math, despite repeated debunking.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column gives a primer on reading the Order Paper and Notice Paper to divine what the upcoming schedule in Parliament looks like.
• Andrew Coyne waves off the two main parties’ attempts at portraying themselves as champions of affordability while they ignore places they could do more.
• Andrew Leach posts about the lessons we should learn from the tweets about that false carbon taxes allegedly applied to that Alberta church.
• Colby Cosh looks at the curious problem of Jason Kenney being less popular than his party, or even Rachel Notley.

Odds and ends:

For Law Times, I talked to lawyers about what kinds of amendments they would like to see to Bill C-69, reforming the environmental assessment process.

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