QP: Treating a gaffe as gospel

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For caucus day, Andrew Scheer decided to show up for QP, and he led off in French, and he immediately zeroed in on yesterday’s verbal gaffe about low-income people not paying taxes, and Trudeau launched into a rant about the Conservatives gearing benefits to the wealthy while he was lowering taxes for the Middle Class™, enriching the Canada Child Benefit and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, all of which the Conservatives opposed. After they repeated the exchange in English, Scheer insisted that taxes were lower under the Conservatives, to which Trudeau said they were misleading the House, and that it was a fact they vote against the measures that would help Canadians. Scheer listed off tax credits that the Liberals cancelled, to which Trudeau slowly enunciate that non-refundable tax credits don’t help the low-income people who need the help. Scheer insisted that low-income people would have benefitted from those tax credits, but Trudeau shrugged off the attacks on his family fortune, before he talked about his choice to serve Canadians. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and in French, he railed about a pharmacare system that still lets private plans exist, to which Trudeau rattled off his talking points about their advisory council that was concerned with implementation. Caron insisted that a fully public system would provide economies of scale, and this time Trudeau picked up a script to list the “concrete steps” they took to make pharmaceuticals more affordable. Don Davies repeated Caron’s first question in English, and Trudeau repeated his first points in kind. Davies went again, and Trudeau replied with the English version of his script.

Round two, and Alain Rayes, Lisa Raitt, and Gérard Deltell insisted that Canadians were paying more for taxes now (Trudeau: Your approach of tax credits only help the well-off, while you opposed our measures; Our approach means that most people are $2000 better off every month; This is a chance for me to talk about the Canada Workers Benefits and benefits for retraining; We cut taxes for SMEs!). Brigitte Sansoucy and Pierre-Luc Dusseault returned to questions about pharmacare for seniors (Trudeau: Look at how we invested in seniors, and we are awaiting the pharmacare report). Mark Strahl and Pierre Poilievre wondered if Trudeau was using tax loopholes to shield his family fortune (Trudeau: While you are focused on attacking me, I’m focused on the needs of Canadians). Niki Ashton and Romeo Saganash asked about housing mould in First Nations (Trudeau: We have committed to doing better, we lifted drinking water advisories, built hundreds of schools and thousand of new houses, but have more to do; [with script]: We are working with the Chief and council to ensure new houses are built).

Round three saw yet more questions on Trudeau’s trust fund (Trudeau: Instead of focusing on me, here is what goes to your constituents tax-free thanks to the CCB), the Trans Mountain pipeline (Trudeau: We need to invest to protect the environment, so we have a concrete plan to create jobs while protecting the environment), low-income Canadians’ taxes (Trudeau: Should you talk to your constituents about how you voted against Middle Class™ tax cuts, the CCB and the GIS), compensation for dairy farmers (Trudeau, with script: We protected Supply Management, and three working groups are working on the compensation), supporting the bill on whale and dolphin captivity (Trudeau, with script: We agree that this should end, and look forward to the committee study).

Overall, it was a strange and repetitive day, where the Conservatives attempted to go for the jugular on Trudeau’s gaffe yesterday, treating it as some kind of gospel that he spouted, which it obviously was not. It was interesting that both the Conservatives and the NDP gave “example” of low-income people in their ridings who were either outraged that Trudeau didn’t think they paid taxes or that they had trouble paying for medications, respectively. That both parties were using the same technique was odd in the extreme. Meanwhile, the Conservatives decided that not only would they pounce on the gaffe, but they would also rail about the prime minister’s trust fund having used some kind of tax loopholes (though where that idea came from I’m not sure). Trudeau largely shrugged this off and turned it into an attack line on the Conservatives, but I am curious why the Speaker allowed them to stand, given that they had nothing to do with the administrative responsibilities of government. Meanwhile, I will give Trudeau props for not resorting to scripts in the wake of yesterday’s gaffe, and in fact he rarely used a script at all today, which was rare for him – then again, when most of the questions are repetitive and on the same subject, it’s not hard to ensure that your same talking points are easily recyclable.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Linda Lapointe for a black dress with a white hexagonal pattern and a black jacket, and to Raj Grewal for a tailored black three-piece suit with a white shirt and pocket square, navy turban and blue tie. Style citations go out to Wayne Long for a black shirt with multicoloured circular patterns with a black jacket and no tie, and to Jane Philpott for a black dress with pink florals and embroidered cuffs.