QP: Getting the minister to stick to his talking points

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While we had a couple of leaders present in the Chamber today, the Liberal benches remained largely empty, with only Mark Gerretsen and Francis Drouin present. Erin O’Toole led off, his scripts on his mini-lectern in front of him, and in French, he quoted the Globe and Mail by saying that it was amateur hour on Bill C-10, and selectively quoted Michael Geist’s concerns about freedom of expression, and demanded the bill be withdrawn. Steven Guilbeault read a script that C-10 forces web giants to invest in Canadian and Quebec creators, and the Conservatives, by blocking the bill, were merely shielding web giants. O’Toole repeated the question in English, and got the same answer in English. O’Toole claimed that Guilbeault doesn’t understand his own bill, and he tried to conflate this with media funding, and called it a direct attack on free speech (something none of the experts have actually said), and Guilbeault suggested that O’Toole actually read the bill, because Section 2.1 states that individuals who upload content are not considered broadcasters. O’Toole the switched to French to complain that it was taking longer to approve immigration files in Quebec than in the rest of the country, and Marco Mendicino recited some reassuring lines about the value of immigration and reaching the right levels. O’Toole pivoted again, and in English, demanded action on Line 5, for which Seamus O’Regan noted the importance of the pipeline on both sides of the border, and why they were making that case.

Rhéal Fortin led for the Bloc, and he raised the General Vance allegations, and wondered if the prime minister considered it a problem that his defence minister didn’t alert him. Harjit Sajjan insisted that he followed the right procedures, and that they were committed to culture changes in the military. Fortin raised the notion of seeking Sajjan’s resignation and replacing him with a female defence minister, and Sajjan, naturally, disputed this.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he demanded the government commit to waiving COVID vaccine patents, to which Mary Ng recited that they would participate in these negotiations at the WTO. Singh repeated the question in English, and Ng repeated her response.

Round two, and Ed Fast quoted the PBO’s report and decried the size of the deficit (Fraser: The PBO report only evaluated part of the budget; Your plan is to yank supports from people and businesses when they need it most), and Richard Martel accused the government of lying in the budget (Fraser: The budget contains an average of private sector forecasts), and then lambasted the government for letting down women in the armed forces (Sajjan: Our measures have not gone far enough, and we have committed to doing more faster), and James Bezan decided to police Trudeau’s feminism over the military issue (Sajjan: I look forward to the committee’s recommendations and all options are on the table).

Luc Desilets once again insisted that CRA was forcing victims of CERB fraud to pay taxes on it now (Lebouthillier: Fraud victims are not to be held responsible for sums paid; The Bloc is misleading Canadians).

Raquel Dancho wanted maternity benefits extended because of pandemic job losses (Qualtrough: We introduced flexibility into the system for these kinds of situations), and Bernard Généreux worried about mothers who had to take pandemic benefits for childcare between waves of the pandemic (Qualtrough: We have introduced and extended flexibilities in the system).

Heather McPherson demanded that the government waive patent rights on COVID vaccines (Ng: We are actively negotiating on this), and Don Davies demanded more rigorous hotel quarantines (Hajdu: We will work with provincial and municipal orders to ensure the Quarantine Act is being enforced).

Round three saw questions on vaccine procurement (Hajdu: 17.4 million have been shipped to provinces to date), vaccine advice (Hajdu: We have been clear to get the first dose available and if people have questions they should ask their healthcare provider), the Davie Shipyard getting an icebreaker contract (Rodriguez: The Bloc are never happy no matter the good news), HFC emission exemptions (Wilkinson: We are fully committed to meeting our international obligations and the temporary permit referred to was based on technical considerations), delays on temporary foreign worker files (Mendicino: We facilitated their arrival during the pandemic, and I am staying in touch in terms of this year’s progress), Quebec companies not getting PPE contracts (MacKinnon: We had to acquire billions of pieces of PPE in the pandemic, from many Canadian companies), Bill C-10 (Guilbeault: Section 2.1 of the bill says that individuals are not considered broadcasters, and you are trying to mislead Canadians), the federal debt (Fraser: I would direct you to Annex 2 of the budget), rumours that a former Liberal party official may buy PornHub’s parent company (Virani: We have strong and comprehensive laws around online exploitation), and a friendly lob on C-10 (Guilbeault: This is about making web giants pay Canadian artists).

Overall, the day was fairly bland as far as QP goes, for what it’s worth. The Conservatives are continuing to push the debunked notion that Bill C-10 is about broad government censorship of the internet (it’s not), but for possibly the first time, Steven Guilbeault has been hewing to more bland and reasonably helpful talking points about making web giants pay and that users are protected, rather than just reading quotes back to Conservatives and making fairly personal digs about members’ beliefs and their potential hypocrisy around them. His talking points are still not great, and there are better ways he could defend the bill if he wanted to (and yeah, it’s got problems), but they’ve decided that “this is about making web giants pay!” is their winning line, which I’m not sure it necessarily is. But what do I know?

Otherwise, the Conservatives are continuing to push the narrative that there is no such thing as scarcity in the global vaccine supply and used a misquote to “prove” it today, which is about the usual level of Grade Three discourse that we’ve come to expect from them. It was good to see the Bloc actually call for Harjit Sajjan’s resignation over his failures on the sexual misconduct file, and replacing him with a woman in the job (where did I hear that one before?).

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

2 thoughts on “QP: Getting the minister to stick to his talking points”

  1. Except Geist actually was complaining that C-10 was a crackdown on “free speech,” thus feeding O’Toole and Lilley and the other stale pale males their right-wing talking points straight out of FOX News. The other day I likened him to Jordan Peterson, the other libertarian sociopath, academic bloviator, and charlatan crank whose 15 minutes have been just one long grandpa rant about about cancel culture. But last night, I had another thought: Geist is also similar to Doug Christie, the wingnut lawyer who took up the cause of “fighting censorship” on behalf of a friggin’ Holocaust denier. Later on, Christie was invited to give talks on just that subject — “free speech” absolutism in the form of defending the indefensible — by none other than Ezra Levant. Free speech is not without limitations. If anything, it needs more. A lot more. Look at the disaster of the U.S. where the First Amendment loads the ammo and the Second Amendment pulls the trigger. That’s what he wants? Shame on him, and F his stupid “freedoms”.

    He doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously because he’s a liar and a Chicken Little doomsayer who just wants to protect his undeserved privilege. And yet he continues to be the go-to “expert” on this file, because he checks all the correct demographic boxes that his fellow stale pale males want to listen to, to confirm their biases. So much for Orwellianism; his latest blog post touts all the media attention he’s received in the past week to whine about being censored. If anything, he’s guilty of Orwellian doublespeak.

    Poultry Geist is a credulous hack running interference for hatemongers and bad-faith actors, both in Canada and externally beyond its borders. If anything the bill doesn’t go far enough; CanCon should be forced upon the US GOP owners of the Postmedia hate rag to shut it down. It’s long overdue that Popper’s paradox become the law of the land.

  2. Oh, and this just in: Mikey boy is on the wrong side of history, and for that matter, so is the MSM that enables the likes of him and his ilk. Along with the web giants themselves. Here, a far more competent woman puts paid to the “very fine people on all sides” BS. It’s clear at this point that we need a bigly total shutdown on overconfident white (or orange) men until we find out what is going on.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/06/hillary-clinton-guardian-disinformation-big-tech-facebook

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