QP: Hotline blues

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Monday, and there were a mere two Liberals in the Chamber. Candice Bergen led off for the Conservatives by video, railing that vaccines were not being distributed fast enough, and demanded a plan from the government. Anita Anand reminded her that the plan is in place, and that over half a million doses are arriving this week. Bergen went two more rounds of the same, and got the same response both times. Gérard Deltell then took over in French, and demanded the government to declare how they would vote on the Uyghur genocide motion, for which Marc Garneau cited the government’s concern with the situation and their actions to try and get verification with international partners, but did not answer the question posed. Deltell cited that the Americans have made a declaration — which is meaningless because they don’t subscribe to the International Genocide Convention — for which Garneau repeated his response.

Alain Therrien rose for the Bloc, citing the hours-long wait times on the government’s hotline for hotel quarantines, for which Patty Hajdu praised their border measures and hotel quarantine making it more robust. Therrien then demanded stronger quarantine measures, for which he got the usual reassurances from Hajdu.

Rachel Blaney led for the NDP, and she complained that the UNDRIP bill had only received two hours of debate — ignoring the winter break and the shenanigans of the opposition in forcing debate on committee reports over bill debates. David Lametti reassured her that they felt the bill was important and hoped it would move along soon. Charlie Angus the railed about companies with poor track records getting contracts for First Nations water systems, for which Marc Miller pointed out that the First Nations choose the contractors, and the department works with them to get results.

Round two, and Pierre Poilievre made a number of specious comparisons of our international rankings as a reflection of our deficit (Fraser: You are using misleading statistics, and our death rates from this pandemic have been lower), Ed Fast railed that there hasn’t been a budget for two years (Fraser: There has been a global pandemic, which has interfered with our usual operations, and we have been transparent), and Pierre Paul-Hus grumbled about our vaccination rates (Anand: We were one of the first countries to begin inoculations, and we are receiving half a million doses this week) and the hotel quarantine hotline (Rodriguez: Stop trying to scare Canadians).

Kristina Michaud also demanded action on the hotel quarantine hotline (Hajdu: We have added more operators to deal with the problem), and complained that hotel owners were not given enough information (Rodriguez: We are not waiting for the Bloc to take action).

Michelle Rempel Garner demanded to know how many Canadians would need to be vaccinated before restrictions could be lifted (Hajdu: We need to thank Canadians taking actions and we are getting vaccines to provinces; Those decisions rest with provinces and we are here to support them), a laundry list of grievances — most of which were provincial responsibility (Hajdu: We have been supporting provinces with things like procuring millions of rapid tests for them).

Heather McPherson railed about Canada getting doses from COVAX (Gould: We are one of the largest donors and the program needs wealth countries like Canada to get doses from it so to can get bulk procurement and equitable access for all countries), and Don Davies tried to insist that the government had mislead Canadians about domestic vaccine production capacity (Champagne: We invested in increasing our bio-manufacture capacity within weeks of the pandemic being declared).

Round three saw questions on the Uyghur genocide motion (Garneau: We are concerned about this issue are working with our partners), whether this would would brought up with the meeting with President Biden (Garneau: China is on the agenda), action on official languages (Joly: It has always been our objective to get this in place this year, but we need opposition support in a hung parliament), French supposedly being “under threat” in Quebec (Joly: We are acting in good faith), a demand to stop funding UNRWA (Gould: Since receiving these allegations, we have been in touch with UNRWA, and we fund neutrality training, and ensuring that these 500,000 Palestinian children get an education), whistleblower legislation (Fergus: We will continue to promote ethics in the public service), guns and gangs (Blair: We are taking strong action to cut off the supply of guns to criminals), airsoft rifles being banned (Blair: We have promised to strengthen gun control), Enbridge Line 5 (Lefebvre: We will continue making the case to the American administration), ongoing funding for frontline organisations (Hussen: We provided an emergency community support fund), and whether there is any research on treatments for COVID (Hajdu: Our government invested in science, and they are not only looking at vaccines but also treatment).

Overall, the day was pretty meh, where most of the narratives being the same as last week, but we saw the addition of the new one about the news reports about the wait times on the government hotline to book hotel quarantine spots, but the government seems to have indicated that they have put more operators on it, so likely that will be cleared up sooner than later. I will also note that Michael Chong has been back to his misleading schtick of trying to insist that every time the House passes a non-binding Supply Day motion, that there is an obligation by the government to adhere to it as part of “democratic norms.” That’s not true. Non-binding motions are just that – non-binding, and government is free to ignore them essentially at their own peril), but unless they want to make a confidence motion out of this, it is simply the Commons expressing itself. Trying to insist otherwise is a bit of mendacity which is disappointing as Chong has normally shown himself to be above the Conservative penchant for mistruth, and of being someone more committed to their principles. That he is intentionally misleading people on this tarnishes that image.

Sartorial snaps and citations remain on hiatus for lack of a sufficient sample.