QP: Praise for our own leader’s plan

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With Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh at the D-Day anniversary ceremonies, and Andrew Scheer elsewhere, it was up to Candice Bergen to lament the increased inspections of pork going into China, to which Marie-Claude Bibeau stated that they were encouraging all industry members to be extremely vigilant in their exports. Bergen demanded to know why a new ambassador had been appointed, to which Mélanie Joly noted that Canada is working with allies to call for the release of the detained Canadians. Bergen decried the deteriorating relationship, and Joly assured her this was a priority file. Luc Berthold took over in French to rail about the pork industry being impacted, and Bibeau repeated her earlier answer. Berthold demanded an ambassador and a WTO complaint, and Bibeau said that she agreed there was no issue with quality of Canadian exports, and that our representative at the WTO did raise the issue. Peter Julian was up next for the NDP, and he read some outrage about the KPMG client tax settlement, and Marc Garneau read that settlements are entered into in an independent process but the government was asking for more transparency going forward. Ruth Ellen Brosseau read her own repeat of the question in French, got Garneau to read the French version of his answer. Brosseau then read TVA was announcing layoffs and blaming competition from web giants, to which Pablo Rodriguez stood up to say that the Conservatives didn’t address the issue for ten years but they were working on legislation. Julian got up to read in English that web giants be made to pay their fair share, and Rodriguez again blamed the Conservatives for inaction.

Round two, and Alain Rayes denounced the government’s “paternalism” with the provinces (Champagne: We’re proud to invest in infrastructure in Quebec and elsewhere; Didn’t your leader say yesterday that Ottawa knows best?), Dan Albas, John Barlow,  railed about interprovincial trade (Champagne: You didn’t move interprovincial trade forward in ten years), Jamie Schmale and Shannon Stubbs railed about the Trans Mountain pipeline (Sohi: We are fixing the system and will have a decision by June 18th). Robert Aubin concern trolled about high frequency rail being a candidate for the Infrastructure Bank (Garneau: Our government is being diligent on this project), and Jenny Kwan demanded Bill S-3 be enacted (Bennett: We have received consultations for an implementation plan). Pierre Paul-Hus railed about Mexican cartel members coming into Canada (Goodale: Those figures are not verifiable, and if you have verifiable evidence, you should submit it to the RCMP), and John Brassard railed about the Auditor General’s budget (Murray: You cut his budget, and we increased it by $41 million, which you voted against). Brigitte Sansoucy and Niki Ashton called the EI system sexist (Duclos: We have reformed the system and instituted other programmes which disproportionately help women).

Round three saw questions on clean technology venture funds (Lightbound: The experts in giving money to people who don’t need it are the Conservatives), the Paris targets (McKenna: Will you vote for our motion on declaring a climate emergency?), preferential treatment of web giants (Rodriguez: We set up a panel that is analysing the situation and there will be legislation to level the playing field), Supply Management (Bibeau: We are protecting farmers and processors, and will disclose the compensation soon), the Manitoba-Minnesota transmission line (Sohi: The agreement from Manitoba Hydro was cancelled and there are outstanding issues), forestry mill shutdowns (Sohi: The issues of wildfires and the pine beetle are related to climate change), the softwood lumber deal (Oliphant: The quotas from the previous agreement hurt the sector and we will continue to defend the industry), the tourism plan leaving out Francophone communities (Joly: We are going to defend them, and invested $2.7 billion in minority language communities), a cellphone tower (Massé: We believe affected communities should have a say), information sharing with the Irving shipyard (Qualtrough: I have directed my department to provide timely and accurate information while respecting privacy), and train accidents since Lac Mégantic (Garneau: We shed full light on the incident, and the people of a Lac Mégantic want to look to the future).

Overall, it was fairly insufferable today, with both opposition parties phrasing their questions as ads for their own leaders’ pitched election promises, which is lame and eye roll inducing. The Conservatives’ questions on interprovincial trade were risible considering that they didn’t make any progress on the file in their ten years in power, while the Liberals getting the provinces to agree to a negative list was verifiable progress because it means that they have a basis to work away at the items on it — and you can ask any economist about this. Of course, we know that this was to follow on Andrew Scheer’s speech last night, as was their praise for the “plan” for a resource corridor across the country — something that might take decades of negotiation to even get agreement on, but hey, they make it sound like it could happen immediately. As well, the number of questions prefaced by the “prime minister’s so-called feminism” was really tiresome, because the policing of someone’s feminism is neither clever nor edifying. Kindly knock it off. And with that in mind, there was some gall at the end of QP when Rachael Harder rose on a point of order to complain about sexist heckling from the Liberals — the verbatim of the complaint she made not having any gendered language in it — never mind the fact that their own backbench is notably louder when women ministers speak, and if Harder wants to know about sexist heckling, she should ask Catherine McKenna to explain it to her what it’s like to be on the receiving end. Honestly.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Marie-Claude Bibeau for a fitted black jacket with a couple of conspicuous zippers, along with black slacks, and to Frank Baylis for a chocolate brown suit with a light pink shirt and a darker pink tie and pocket square. Style citations go out to Robert Waugh for a red jacket with a blue windowpane pattern, along with black slacks, a white shirt, and a black and grey plaid tie, and to Yvonne Jones for a black top with a zebra print jacket and a hot pink scarf.

2 thoughts on “QP: Praise for our own leader’s plan”

  1. I don’t think it’s sexist either to point out that Justin Trudeau, while a white and heterosexual male, gets sexist heckling and abuse too because of how he is “perceived.” Misogyny against men is homophobia, and the Cons and their Internet troll acolytes have been spewing it at him practically since he ran for MP. You can find any number of juvenile memes featuring him wearing a hijab, a tiara, or even Jennifer Lopez’s (in)famous Oscars dress, or weeping with Tammy Faye’s mascara streaming down his face. You can find any number of playground-bully nicknames the Con trolls hurl out to feminize him: Fruity Trudy, TruPaul, Trudashian, Princess Justine, the list goes on and on.

    Then there’s the so-called economically anxious O&G protests out in Alberta last year, with their vulgar signs about Margaret’s love life. She, Sophie, and even little Ella-Grace get rape and death threats on social media. I can recall some hot garbage Ezra posted where he “speculated” that Margaret may have had an affair with Trump! But Scheer hires Ezra’s “IT guy” to run his campaign, and the Cons have the nerve to complain that Trudeau is a “fake feminist”? Scheeriously?

    Jordan Peterson, the Cons’ favorite amateur marine biologist, Joseph Campbell wannabe, and lobster chef (now an informal “advisor” to Doug Ford) blamed Trudeau’s feminist policies (what he called the “murderous equity doctrine”) for the incel rampage in Toronto. The federal Cons’ provincial acolytes have previously directed vile hatred at Kathleen Wynne and Rachel Notley, including threats of violence that get written off as “freedom of speech.” To properly catalogue the stomach-churning misogyny invoked by the Harper/Scheer party against their opponents would require a multi-volume encyclopedia set that would never be fully complete.

    These GOP North knuckle-draggers and their handmaids have zero credibility on women’s rights or even basic respect for women, and for them to claim or insinuate, in bad faith, that they do, let alone that they outdo the Liberals on this matter, is absolutely rage-inducing. The DeformaCons’ retrograde policies on everything from women’s reproductive rights to LGBTQ+ rights to workplace equality speak for themselves, but so does the rhetoric that they both employ and turn a blind eye to among their supporters, targeting and intimidating female politicians of a left-of-centre outlook and even the prime minister and his own family. How disgusting. More BS theater, as Neil Macdonald so aptly describes the free-range insane asylum and circus-maximus showboating that is QP.

    • I love youtrpost. The only thing wrong is that no matter how one frames it …and you did a wonderful job… the tory mindset like all others that have been indoctrinated over and over again is so ingrained that they generally have no way of looking at the errors of their thinking. I live in a Western riding that has elected a tory for decades. In fact the joke here is that a sockeye salmon could run for the conservatives and win. The ultimate proof I point out to them is that a brick ran twice and sits behind Scheer and functions as the “heckler in chief”.

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