QP: Beware Big Arts and Culture

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For the prime minister’s first appearance of the week, he had only Mark Gerretsen on the benches to keep him company (though Francis Drouin arrived after the PM left when the leader’s round ended). Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern, and he wondered if the government filing an amicus briefing in American courts mere hours before the threatened closure of Line 5 was an admission of failure of diplomacy — not that the Michigan governor has the power or authority to shut down the pipeline. Justin Trudeau replied that they filed the brief and are continuing to engage and encouraging mediation between the parties involved. O’Toole asked the same question in French, got the same answer, and then he asked why Trudeau personally approved a raise for General Vance if his office was investigating him for sexual harassment, and Trudeau stated that his office did not investigate, but that was PCO, as political offices should never conduct investigations, before he gave some usual bromides about supporting men and women in uniform. O’Toole related the question in English, got the same answer, and then insisted that he caught out Trudeau in a lie, stating that Katie Telford was apparently “investigating” when she sought assurances the allegations didn’t pertain to a safety issue, but Trudeau shrugged off the allegation and repeated his usual assurances of taking all allegations seriously and following the same process the Conservatives did in 2015.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and he groused about time allocation on C-19, insinuating that the prime minister wanted an election in a pandemic. Trudeau disputed that, stating that he doesn’t want one, but the Bloc and Conservatives obviously do because they voted against a confidence issue. Blanchet said he wasn’t afraid of an election but didn’t want one, and repeated the allegation, and Trudeau considered this far-fetched, but they need to be prepared in a hung parliament for a possible election, since the opposition apparently wants one.

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and accused the government of sending the military to spy on Black Lives Matters protests, and Trudeau agreed that the reports were concerning and he was looking into them. Singh repeated the same question in French, as though Trudeau didn’t just deny involvement, and Trudeau repeated his same response. 

Round two, and Richard Martel raised the since disavowed comments from Steven Guilbeault on Bill C-10 (Guilbeault: We want web giants to pay for Canadian content and to ensure that Canadian artists can be discovered on their platforms), Rachael Harder accused “Big Arts and Culture” of trying to Bigfoot small content creators (Guilbeault: Conservatives are dragging Canadian artists through the mud), and Alain Rayes accused Guilbeault of promulgating conspiracy theories about opponents of C-10 (Guilbeault: Why would you deprive Quebec artists of hundreds of millions of dollars).

 Rhéal Fortin wondered why the government didn’t act on the Deschamps Report, contrasting that to assurances of “immediate action” on the Vance allegations (Sajjan: We did act on the Vance allegations immediately), and demanded Sajjan’s resignation (Sajjan: We took swift action).

Raquel Dancho complained women entrepreneurs weren’t getting support (Freeland: Our support programmes continue to be in place until September, and the budget contains unprecedented support for women entrepreneurs), and Luc Berthold accused hedge funds of getting the wage subsidy to pad their bottom lines (Freeland: We will be there for all businesses, and 5.4 million businesses are being supported by the wage subsidy), and the rail bypass around Lac Mégantic (Alghabra: This has been a priority for me, and we reiterated our commitment to have this completed by 2023, and construction will begin next year).

Leah Gazan complained about exclusions from the most recent immigration programme (Mendicino: I am proud of this pathway, and we have introduced other pathways for asylum seekers who works as essential caregivers), and Charlie Angus raised the Privacy Commissioner’s concerns about Bill C-11 (Blair: We share a commitment to protect the privacy concerns of Canadians, and that is why we value his input).

Round three saw questions on Katie Telford’s testimony (Sajjan: Immediate action was taken and no politician should be involved in investigations), second doses of vaccines — which is provincial jurisdiction (Hajdu: It’s great that we’ve had twenty million doses delivered so far), the Lac Mégantic rail bypass (Alghabra: We recommitted to it, and it will begin construction next summer), the “deadly spike” in organised crime (Blair: We invested $327 million into police forces’ capacity into dealing with guns and gang crime, which you voted against), Bill C-10 (Guilbeault: Here is a list of supporters of the bill), a First Nations fishery challenge (Jordan: We are committed to working with First Nations, and we want to ensure they can get out on the water as soon as possible), and a call for a specialised sexual assault court (Lametti: We committed to help victims of sexual assault to get free legal advice, and we will implement that with the provinces).

Overall, I had fully expected the Conservatives to spend the bulk of their questions today demanding a performative meltdown over Line 5 as opposed to trying to play gotcha with it off the start, we instead got the usual mix of General Vance questions (and another attempted gotcha which didn’t make sense – I fail to see how seeking assurances is an “investigation”) and Bill C-10 questions. We did see the novel new invention of Big Arts and Culture as some kind of Conservative bogeyman, which apparently wants to quash upstart content creators in favour of simply getting government “handouts” to create content, which is…bizarre and frankly risible horseshit, but this is the quality of the questions we’re getting for the sake of holding the government to account these days. Meanwhile, I continue to be amazed that Steven Guilbeault is being allow to continue to flailing as badly as he is, sticking to talking points for a mere two responses before he started trying to speak extemporaneously again. And while normally, I’m all for ministers speaking extemporaneously – and all MPs, really – he’s just so bad at this, and it’s both painful to watch, and boggling that PMO isn’t leaning harder on him because he’s tripping over all of his messaging in a very embarrassing way.

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

2 thoughts on “QP: Beware Big Arts and Culture”

  1. I really think it’s a language-barrier issue. The bill is popular in Quebec (the National Assembly just today came out unanimously in favour of it), but all the critics so far (like lobster boy Geist) have come from English media, and 99.9% of English media are Con sympathizers. He’s a pretty good writer; I read his op-ed in the Star and someone pointed me to his treatise on the web giants themselves. It was clear and concise, but he’s a poor speaker, at least his English isn’t so good. I don’t know why they don’t put Dabrusin up to answer in QP or on the Toronto talk shows. Guilbeault’s ideas are good, but there’s just something that gets lost in translation.

    Harder is just out-and-out bullying him at this point, and it reminds me of the cruel mockery that Rempel-Garner did when Trudeau’s inner “translation engine” got stuck and he had that “drink box water thing” glitch. She sounded like Sara Huckabee making fun of Biden’s speech impairment. In a just world it would have cost the Cons all their seats like the PCs’ vile ad about Chretien, but this isn’t a just world. There’s no direct translation for what Trudeau was trying to call it; plus he was jet-lagged, but leave it to the Cons to zero in like schoolyard bullies on what the person is saying or how they say it, versus what the message actually is. This is, of course, because they have nothing but memorized scripts of lies and hate. Harder in particular is a tradwife Stepford droid from Westworld programmed to spew BS.

    But now I’m seeing murmurs on social media of plans to hatch a new fake scandal just before the summer shutdown in June. Why don’t they come up with credible policies instead of these juvenile attacks?

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