QP: A parliamentary secretary flounders

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Despite being in the building, Justin Trudeau was elsewhere for QP today, nor was his deputy present. Erin O’Toole led off, with a script on the mini-lectern in front of him, and he lamented that the pandemic early warning unit was scrapped months before the onset of this current pandemic. Darren Fisher got up to read a statement about the plans to conduct an independent review of the decisions taken. O’Toole was not satisfied, and demanded answers, and Fisher repeated his script on an independent review. O’Toole switched to rapid testing, and falsely insinuated that they would have eliminated the current testing backlog, though that is not the case — they are not the same. Fisher read that they are working with provinces and that new tests were approved. O’Toole blamed an outbreak in a Calgary hospital on the lack of rapid testing, and Fisher reiterated a script about working together to increase testing capacity. O’Toole switched to French to repeat the demand, and Fisher stumblingly accused the Conservatives of trying to politicise regulatory processes, but didn’t do so very effectively. Alain Therrien led off for the Bloc to demand higher health transfers, to which Pablo Rodriguez listed federal cooperation with Quebec. Luc Thériault repeated the demand, and Rodriguez said that they were dealing directly with the government of Quebec and didn’t need the Bloc to be middle-men. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he lamented that infrastructure hadn’t been built, to which Catherine McKenna gave some happy talking points about the morning’s announcement on infrastructure priorities. Singh switched to English to repeat the question, and McKenna repeated her happy talking points in English.

Round two, and Gérard Deltell tried some revisionist history about closing the borders (Blair: We did act swiftly when necessary), Stephanie Kusie asked the same in English (Fisher: Science evolved and we worked with it), Ed Fast railed about the pandemic early response system (Fisher: Reads the same script as earlier), and Pierre Paul-Hus and James Bezan asked about the Bayliss Medical contract (Anand: The contract you mentioned is with a different company, and your question is irrelevant). Gabriel Ste-Marie and Sébastien Lemire demanded aid for businesses in the “red zone” in Quebec (Joly: We are working with Quebec, and here are our programmes). Michelle Rempel Garner laid the plandemic warning system, border closures and rapid testing at the feet of the prime minister, and accused the government of using talking points “out of Beijing” (Fisher: We were alerted to the strange pneumonia in December and have been working ever since). Alistair MacGregor worried about the exemption around BC ferry passengers (Garneau: It was a decision that had to be made for marine safety), and Don Davies railed about long-term care facilities (Schulte: We put new funds for provinces in the Safe Restart Agreement).

Round three saw questions on modernising the Official Languages Act (Joly: We are working with stakeholders; When will your leader denounce the attack of St. Jean university in Alberta), the government allegedly not supporting Senator Atuallajan’s bid to head the Interparliamentary Union (Champagne: I had a conversation with her today), increasing aid for seniors (Rodriguez: We have given additional aid to seniors; Schulte: We invested twice as much financial assistance to seniors than we outlined in our platform), rural broadband (Monsef: A million households are on the way to being connected), a loophole related to grow-ops (Fisher: We worked hard to get the bulk of the illegal industry off the streets, and we can have a conversation about this issue), the Mi’kmaq fishery dispute (Jordan: We are in discussion, and they are positive), a natural gas expansion (O’Regan: We extended the deadline to ensure meaningful consultation given the pandemic), a CERB issue (Hussen: This has been there for Canadians, and we are implementing the next phase of the recovery plan), and the newly approved rapid tests (Fisher: Decisions on distribution are not and cannot be political).

Overall, it was a bad, bad day – were Erin O’Toole not there, it might as well have been a Friday in terms of the quality of the exchanges. As Patty Hajdu’s parliamentary secretary, Darren Fisher pretty much floundered in the face of taking the bulk of the questions for the day, limited to unhelpful scripts, and when he tried to go off-script in order to score points, he was shaky and unfocused, and his points wouldn’t land because they were made so ineffectively. This is not good, and while one might understand that the parliamentary secretaries are out of practice when it comes to answering for their ministers, the advent of this being a “hybrid” session would make one think that ministers would be more available as they aren’t travelling to events, but alas. As a result, questions for which the government should have had reasonable answers were essentially left with them looking incompetent. As for the Conservatives, I remain mystified why they are trying to make “This is another WE scandal in the making” their new catchphrase. It doesn’t make sense in any context, and feels like a desperate attempt to try and link scandals. I will also note with bemusement that Garnett Genuis asked an angry question, got a reasonable response from Minister François-Philippe Champagne that answered the question, and because he had a script, Genuis asked a second, even angrier question as though Champagne hadn’t answered. This is amateur-hour, guys. Finally, could Jagmeet Singh come up with new lines that don’t include “pretty words”? It’s become rather tired – especially because I would hazard that many of the government’s happy-clappy talking points aren’t actually “pretty.”

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Darrell Samson for a navy suit and bow tie with a patterned light blue shirt, and to Andréanne Larouche for a black dress with some brass detailing under a black leather jacket. Style citations go out to Bardish Chagger for a black dress with pink, red and cream florals, and to William Amos for a brown suit with a mint green shirt and a printed tie.

2 thoughts on “QP: A parliamentary secretary flounders”

  1. The Cons have nothing positive to contribute, so they lie, harass, badger, and manufacture scandals out of thin air (read: their rear orifices). WeGhazi has no “smoking gun” and I doubt anyone really even knows what the “accusation” is that’s being made anymore, other than Trudeau bad because reasons. There was never a “scandal” to be had in the first place. It was always a perverse attempt to produce a direct-to-video remake of Stupid Sponsorgate, humiliate the PM and his family, grab media attention and boost their polling numbers (or damage the Liberals’), and craft a grotesque caricature of Trudeau as Bizarro Universe Trump. They have devolved completely into conspiracy theorists and hatemongers. They fling sh~t at the wall to see what sticks, then accuse the Liberals of making a mess. They’re abusive. They’re Republicans. They suck.

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