QP: Trudeau challenges an absent Scheer

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The prime minister was present for a miserable day in Ottawa, but Andrew Scheer was absent, despite his previous fist-shaking about the libel suit. That left Lisa Raitt to lead off, raising the lawsuit, and wondered when the action would commence. Justin Trudeau stood up, with notes in hand, and he noted that the leader of the opposition has a history of making false and misleading statements, which is why they put him on notice. Raitt tried again, and listed broken promises as falsehoods the prime minister spoke previously (pretty sure there’s a difference there), and again demanded the action to commence. Trudeau repeated his response, and Raitt noted that the ball was now in the prime minister’s court, and Trudeau noted that Scheer did not condemn white supremacists when asked directly to do so yesterday, and said he’d give him another chance to do so. Alain Rayes took over in French, and he too demanded the action commence, and Trudeau recited the French version of his points that Scheer misleads Canadians and treats it as a virtue. Rayes tried again, and Trudeau repeated in French that Scheer did not condemn white supremacists. Jagmeet Singh was up for the NDP, and he concern trolled that Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott were kicked out of caucus, and demanded a public inquiry. Trudeau stated that they tried for weeks to resolve the issue but in the end, the will of caucus was clear. Singh switched to French to demand an inquiry, and Trudeau spoke about the great things that his government was focused on. Singh switched to a question about reliable cellphone service and demanded that the government stand up to telecom companies and order them to lower costs, to which Trudeau reminded him that the minister of rural economic development was making coverage a priority. Singh then moved onto the lack of federal involvement in money laundering investigations in BC, to which Trudeau noted that he must not have read the budget because there were investments in doing just that. 

Round two, and Shannon Stubbs, Pierre Paul-Hus, and Mark Strahl returned to the tough talk about the libel suit (Chagger: Your leader has a history of misleading statements and on previous occasions when they were served notice, they withdrew statements). Tracey Ramsey and Charlie Angus was concerned about the leak of Supreme Court of Canada applicants (Lametti: Leaks concern us, they didn’t come from my ministry, and I trust my colleagues when they say that it didn’t come from theirs). Rachael Harder, Kelly Block, and Pierre Poilievre all returned to their demands that  the lawsuit move forward (Monsef: Since that question has been answered, let’s talk about status of women; Garneau: I’m proud that 47 percent of Transport Canada’s nominations are women; Morneau: He’s not asking about the budget, and he doesn’t care about low-income seniors because he already has a million-dollar pension). Niki Ashton  and Alexandre Boulerice worried about Loblaws getting climate dollars (McKenna: We’re taking climate action, and that grant was based on an open competition and got the greatest bang for their bucks).

Round three saw yet questions on the libel suit (Chagger: When the leader of the opposition got the notice last week, he deleted and edited tweets), high-frequency rail (Garneau: We’re working on it and we’ll let you know when we have an update), the Coast Guard’s ageing fleet (Casey: We will continue to provide them with the tools they need, and 2018 was a more difficult year than usual for ice conditions), the Loblaws environment grant (McKenna: This was an open competition), changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement in the budget bill (Blair: We are committed to the efficiency of the refugee system, and are trying to reduce the number of people who cross irregularly), Quebec’s “secularism” bill (Lametti: The Charter protects all citizens — we don’t choose which ones we respect and which we don’t).

Overall, it was one of the worst-behaved QPs in recent memory, and one Conservative MP was nearly ejected for failing to come to order. There was some heated cross-talk, and we’re nowhere even near the silly season yet. We got a lot more clip-gathering by the Conservatives regarding their attempt to sound tough on the libel lawsuit, and Trudeau made his own strategy of making Andrew Scheer own up to his winking to white nationalists — and in particular calling out that Scheer won’t explicitly disavow them — which he certainly hopes to gain traction on as we approach an election. Of course, it would have been more effective if Trudeau had waited for Scheer to actually be present so that he could get an actual response, rather than looking like this was a script failure. We’ll have to see if this gets any response from Scheer tomorrow. The NDP were all over the map with their questions today — but that’s not such a bad thing considering how single-minded all other questions have been (not that they’re actually questions so much as performances for social media clips). One imagines that it’s only going to get worse from here, unfortunately, the fewer QPs that we have before the election, and the more that each side wants to perform for their own clip audiences. 

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Matt Jeneroux for a navy suit and tie with a black waistcoat and white shirt, and to Mélanie Joly for a black turtleneck and slacks with a camel-coloured long jacket. Style citations go out to Catherine McKenna for a fuchsia, beige and orange striped dress with a taupe jacket, and to James Maloney for a black suit with a dark pink shirt and a blue-grey tie. Dishonourable mention goes out to Kevin Waugh for a black suit with a yellow shirt and yellow striped tie, and to Anthony Housefather for a similar ensemble, but the tie was speckled rather than striped.