QP: Afraid of the economy

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The the budget lock-up going on not far from the Hill, and the Conservatives looking to go into full procedural meltdown mode in response to this morning’s justice committee meeting. Andrew Scheer stood up to decry the committee meeting results, demanding to know what the prime minister was covering up. Justin Trudeau stood up and read a script saying that he took responsibility for the erosion of trust between his office and Jody Wilson-Raybould, that the committee heard testimony, that they gave an extraordinary waiver of confidence, and the decision was ultimately hers all along. Scheer disputed this in English, but Trudeau repeated his response sans-script in English. Scheer again disputed that Wilson-Raybould could not speak, and wondered why she wasn’t being allowed to “finish her story.” Trudeau insisted that he did waive the confidentiality so that she could speak fully, and called the Conservatives desperate to talk about anything other than the economy because they know it would show their plans failed. Scheer retorted that the PM was desperate to talk about anything other than this scandal, and repeated his demand. Trudeau repeated that the Conservatives didn’t want to talk about the economy because they didn’t have a plan. Scheer wondered what was so bad that the PM was trying to hide it, and Trudeau stuck to his insistence that the Conservatives were afraid to talk about the economy. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and he read that appointing Anne McLellan was a weak response to what happened, and demanded a public inquiry. Trudeau gave a pained performance about the NDP not standing up for workers, as the government was standing up for jobs and workers. Singh switched to French to list the resignations that happened in recent weeks before repeating his derision of McLellan, and Trudeau dismissed the talk of “politics” in favour of listing the good economics gains his government made. Singh, in French, remained sceptical of the appointment, and Trudeau wondered aloud what people in Quebec would think about Singh not caring about their jobs. Singh took another shot at McLellan in English, and Trudeau listed all the steps they took in order to make matters public.

Round two, and Lisa Raitt and Pierre Paul-Hus demanded to know what happened after January 14th to Wilson-Raybould that “terrifies this government” (Chagger: Committees work independently of this place, and they did their work, much like the Ethics Commissioner is doing; Hey, 900,000 jobs were created since we took office), and Mark Strahl railed about the letter the Liberal committee members wrote (Chagger: We are focused on Canadians). Tracey Ramsey again demanded an independent public inquiry (Chagger: The committee spent five weeks looking at this ). Erin O’Toole concern trolled that our country’s reputation was in “tatters” over this issue (Freeland: Rules-based international order is essential to our goals, and we are cooperating with the OECD; It is a profound insult to people living under Maduro or Putin to compare anything happening here to there), and Stephen Blaney and Michael Barrett returned to his demands to let Wilson-Raybould speak (Chagger: The committee looked into this, the Ethics Commissioner is investigating, but let’s talk about how we lifted children out of poverty). Alexandre Boulerice thundered about Anne McLellan’s appointment (Chagger: Same response).

Round three saw yet more questions on Wilson-Raybould (Chagger: Same answer as before), SNC-Lavalin buying a yacht for Gadhafi (Freeland: It’s insulting and absurd to make any comparison between Canada and countries under dictatorships; I can tell you all about what this government is going for women in the world), Supply Management (Poissant: We stood up for Supply Management when the Americans wanted to dismantle it), the treatment of francophones in the armed forces because some specialised courses are only available in English (Joly: We reinvested in the military college at St. Jean to ensure there is training available after the Conservatives shut it down), the lack of promotions for unilingual francophones in the RCMP (Joly: We have no lessons to take from the Bloc on the protection of francophones), the rate of TB among Inuit thanks to a housing shortage (O’Regan: We are working with our partners and governments to find community-led approaches).

Overall, it was a louder day than yesterday, though I would note that the responses were less punchy, but there was a definite move by Trudeau to ham-fistedly change the channel, and insist that the Conservatives were so afraid about talking about the economy that they were trying to keep on this issue, which he insisted was pretty much done with. It’s transparently ridiculous, but this is his attempting to (finally) staunch the bleeding, though I’m not sure it’s terribly effective strategy. Bardish Chagger was less quick with her retorts today, preferring to parrot Trudeau’s lines about how great the government has been about the economy (Jobs! Child poverty declining!) Really, there was so little content in QP today that the only real exchange that was worth noting was Chrystia Freeland clapping back at Erin O’Toole.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Michel Picard for a fuchsia jacket with black slacks, a white shirt and a lavender tie and pocket square, and to Stephanie Kusie for a navy dress with lace half-sleeves. Style citations go out to Candice Bergen for a black dress with white, blue and red florals, and frilled sleeves, and to Colin Carrie for a dark grey checkerboard jacket with black slacks, a white shirt and pocket square, and a black and grey striped tie. Dishonourable mention goes out to Rosemarie Falk for a white jacket with a fluorescent yellow top and a black skirt with a floral pattern.