QP: Working in the real world, within the constitution

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For Wednesday, proto-PMQ day, Justin Trudeau was in the Chamber, thankfully, with a mere two other Liberals along with him. Erin O’Toole led off, also in person with a script on his mini-lectern, and complained that only eight percent of Canadians would be vaccinated by April, for which Justin Trudeau gave the “good news” of vaccine deliveries that are arriving. O’Toole was not impressed, and quoted Dr. Theresa Tam saying that it was a fact that a lot of people won’t be vaccinated for months, for which Trudeau stated that they are getting doses as quickly as they can. O’Toole said demanded the plan to get 300,000 people vaccinated per day, and Trudeau said that they are supporting provinces to get ready for the “big lift” as deliveries ramp up. O’Toole switched to French to repeat the question, got the same answer, and then O’Toole whinged that we were so far behind other countries, and Trudeau said that he believes in the provinces and territories to administer the vaccines (which may be optimistic on his part, given that certain provinces are run by incompetent murderclowns).

For the Bloc, Yves-François Blanchet raised the government’s discussion paper on official languages and demanded that the government apply Quebec’s Bill 101 to federally-regulated sectors, and Trudeau gave a paean about French being under threat outside of Quebec and the government was working to protect it. Blanchet felt the government plan was too slow and demanded Bill 101 be applied immediately, but Trudeau said that while the Bloc was focused on Quebec, he needed to be focused on French all over the country.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, demanded support for this party’s (unconstitutional) pharmaceutical bill, for which Trudeau stated that they support pharmacare, but they would not support the NDP’s plan to impose a top-down solution in favour of negotiating with provinces. Singh switched to English to claim that his bill was according to the Hoskins Report (it’s not), and Trudeau listed the actions his government took to lower drug prices, and stated that because they respect the constitution, they are negotiating with provinces.

Round two, and Pierre Poilievre listed a bunch of misleading statistics around unemployment, vaccines and the deficit and made the “joke” that the “coach” should be fired (Trudeau: We are standing up for Canadians, and will give them the support they need; you were wrong then and you’re wrong now), and Richard Martel complained about the hotel quarantine hotline delays (Trudeau: We are here to deliver on some of the strictest border measures in the world), and O’Toole got back up to read an astounded script about these delays (Trudeau: We have some of the strictest measures in the world).

Stéphane Bergeron raised a story about Pierre Trudeau asking a company to move out of Quebec (Trudeau: I’m not reopening these old debates), and used it to question current federal supports (Trudeau: Here is a list of places we have investment, and I know this concerns the Bloc).

Michelle Rempel Garner whined that restrictions may continue after vaccinations (Trudeau: I’m not sure what you’re watching, but the numbers have declined because of the sacrifices people have made, and we need to stay vigilant), and Pierre Paul-Hus demanded a plan to make up for the vaccine delays (Trudeau: The deliveries are accelerating, but we still need to stay vigilant against variants).

Peter Julian demanded support for his (unconstitutional) pharmacare bill (Trudeau: We support universal pharmacare, but it cannot come top-down like this bill), and Don Davies made the same complaint, making some false claims about what the bill does (Trudeau: We work in the real world, within the constitution).

Round three saw questions on visa offices in India being run by a Beijing-owned company (Trudeau: We take security and privacy seriously), Line 5 (Trudeau: We did talk about Line 5, because it is an important issue), problems in quarantine hotels (Trudeau: We are concerned about the allegations of sexual harassment at these hotels, and will follow-up), the genocide convention (Trudeau: We welcome Parliament debating this issue, but as government, we have a responsibility to work with the international community to ensure that allegations are properly investigated by experts), the allegations against General Vance (Trudeau: I first learned of the allegations in the media, and we have launched an independent investigation), universal pharmacare (Trudeau: We are working with provinces).

Overall, it wasn’t a terribly great day, but when are they really, these days? I have about lost all patience with Justin Trudeau responding to questions based on false or misleading premises with “good news” talking points, in particular when the likes of Pierre Poilievre is crafting very deliberately mendacious statistics. That Trudeau dismissed them as “word games” rather than deconstructing them and proving Poilievre to be a liar just fuels Poilievre to keep this particular tactic going, because he knows he can get away with it. Erin O’Toole again carried on his shtick of taking the follow-up questions for some of his MPs, and from my vantage point in the gallery, you can see his big binder full of scripts that are designed to make these follow-up questions look spontaneous and engaged, when it was a scripted exercise all along. The NDP, meanwhile, spent all of their questions on their doomed and unconstitutional pharmacare bill, getting as many clips as they could about it to distribute over social media so they can look outraged now that it has been defeated, but I will grant that Trudeau did give the correct responses to these questions, noting that they can’t impose top-down legislation on the provinces, and that this kind of thing can’t be waved in with a magic wand. Truer words have never been spoken (particularly in QP).

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

4 thoughts on “QP: Working in the real world, within the constitution”

  1. Considering all the flak you are getting on social media for calling out this bill, maybe the NDP caucus is very tuned into what their supporters want and this bill, meaningless messaging and all, is what they want?

  2. You have for the umpteenth time illustrated Trudeau’s lack of chops in question period. Too careful by half. I’m sorry to be obtuse, but I would shred Pollievre like a piece of old Italian cheese. These polite Libs need to get into a different mode. Polly, Remps, the Tool and the Quebec blokhead need to be cut new ones and now. No comment on Strahl though. He has expertise on nothing so his recent “elevation is really just a muffin burger,

  3. When the opposition has only one plan and that is to get as many “gotcha” questions out there because they have nothing else to offer the Liberals have to be very careful what they say.

    The opposition takes everything said by the government and tries to twist it into something negative which the predominately Conservative backing press will report it word for word without checking its validity.

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