QP: Duelling quotes on the Broadcast Act

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For a Thursday in the Chamber, we had two Liberals present among the otherwise empty benches — Mark Gerretsen, and Francis Drouin. Erin O’Toole led off, scripts on mini-lectern, and he lamented the third wave and compared our vaccination rate to the US, asking why the government failed on vaccines. Anita Anand replied with a list of vaccine deliveries. O’Toole switched to French to repeat his preamble, but at the last minute, switched the question to the border, but Anand simply repeated her response. Still in French, O’Toole raised the question of what date Canada would achieve 75 percent first doses and 20 percent second doses. Patty Hajdu replied that Canada’s vaccination story was a good one as we are number two in the G20 for vaccines administered. O’Toole returned to English to raise some hyperbolic concerns over the Broadcast Act amendments, for which Stephen Guilbeault read back quotes from Conservatives who claimed the bill initially was not strong enough. O’Toole quoted Michael Geist’s criticisms of the the bill, for which Guilbeault quoted several other organisations who said these concerns were dangerously misleading.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he complained that people in hotel quarantine were getting EI, to which Carla Qualtrough insisted that this wasn’t possible under the rules. Therrien said that TVA reporting disputed this, and Pablo Rodriguez stated that this was a question written before they got the answer, and people who took a vacation could not get government assistance.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, demanded that the most vulnerable get vaccinated first — which is provincial jurisdiction. Patty Hajdu listed assistance that were given to provinces, but did not point out that basic jurisdictional issue. Singh then dismissed jurisdictional concerns around paid sick leave and demanded a magical fix to the federal sickness benefit. Qualtrough responded that they have made programmes available to those who need it— but gave no correction around jurisdiction.

Round two, and Gérard Deltell raised the appointment of yet another former Supreme Court justice to look into fixing the sexual misconduct in the military (Sajjan: We are committed to fixing this issue), and accused the prime minster of lying over the Vance allegations (Sajjan: This is the same process your leader engaged in 2015), Leona Alleslev gave another round of the same in English (Sajjan: We learned that days after Stephen Harper appointed Vance in 2015, the investigation was dropped citing pressure), James Bezan repeated the same questions (Sajjan: You were parliamentary secretary in 2015, when Vance was appointed, and what did you do at the time? Maybe you were pressuring the military police to drop it), and then raised the news story of someone convicted of misconduct getting glowing letters of recommendation (Sajjan: We are committed to fixing the system, which is what our announcement was about today).

Christine Normandin asked about immigration processing for those already in the country (Mendicino: We are working closely with the government of Quebec), and that people weren’t even getting their applications for permanent residency acknowledged, as those receipts are necessary for programmes (Mendicino: I am pleased that Quebec is raising its immigration levels and we will work with them; we implemented innovative new measures to reduce processing times).

Raquel Dancho returned to the General Vance allegations (Sajjan: This is why we made today’s announcements around Justice Arbour and appointing a new chief of military conduct and culture), and wanted an acknowledgement of his failure to act (Sajjan: We took immediate action on the Vance allegations, and we are creating a new organisation).

Brain Masse demanded an national auto strategy around creating parts for electric vehicles (Ehsassi: We have engaged with stakeholders to ensure we have a robust sector), and Jenny Kwan blasted the housing affordability programme (Hussen: We increased funding to speed up the construction and repair of affordable housing issues.

Round three saw questions on the changes to the Broadcasting Act (Guilbeault: Who is trying to deceive whom, and I have more quotes that say that saying the changes are an infringement on free speech are factually incorrect and dangerous misleading), a complaint to the Official Languages Commissioner because federal bodies are not releasing reports in both official languages (Brière: French needs to be protected and promoted, and the minister is very active on this), tightening up quarantines (Hajdu: Let us stick to the facts, and we have some of the strictest measures in the world, and we have this data because we are testing and tracing), the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia (Gould: We have allocated $34 million to the situation), Line 5 (Serré: This is non-negotiable and we are stopping at nothing to keep it going), “job-killing” regulations (Wilkinson: Clean tech is an important sector, and are committed to working with the sector), problems with Switch Health’s border testing (Hajdu: You are torquing the truth, and none of the cases using Switch Health — that provider only provides the day 10 testing, not the day three testing), the dubious PBO report on the Infrastructure Bank (McKenna: There has been positive progress at the Bank, and they have new leadership and a newly refocused mandate, and is doing more than its predecessor, P3 Canada did), and complaints about nuclear power (Wilkinson: Reducing emissions from electricity could mean more nuclear as it’s non-emitting technology).

Overall, the day didn’t have the same singular focus as yesterday did, but there were a lot of questions on the General Vance issue, and Harjit Sajjan was doing his best to try and go on the offensive today, though his suggestion that it was James Bezan possibly applying pressure to the military police to end the investigation in 2015 was over the line. (It may very well have been the Harper PMO, but suggesting Bezan? Come on). The more interesting aspect of the day were the completely hyperbolic claims that the proposed changes to the Broadcasting Act were some kind of prelude to massive scale government censorship were also pretty ridiculous, but the fact that you had critics and the minister simply reading quotes to one another was not terribly illuminating. I get that there are only 35 seconds to answer, but the minister could have provided something substantive to the questions being raised about why they wanted these amendments, but he didn’t do that, which leaves us all in the dark as to his reasoning. We could be using Question Period for actual accountability and raising legitimate questions, and for delivering legitimate answers and not just canned talking points (looking especially at those around jurisdictional questions), but no, it’s just scoring points and gathering clips for social media.

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

2 thoughts on “QP: Duelling quotes on the Broadcast Act”

  2. If you read the NatPo article it appears that they’re nervous about their disinfo and hate websites being shuttered, as Ballingall’s BS factory is mentioned by name. Geist is a libertarian concern troll who should be ignored. He competes with Attaran for most obnoxious attention-seeking academic with an axe to grind and an agenda to push. Guilbeault was, of course, an environmentalist, so he should be lauded for taking out the trash and flushing toxic waste out of the series of tubes. Poor Jeff and Ezra will just have to get real jobs.

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