QP: Security breach and securities regulators

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While the prime minister was off to the G7 meeting in the UK, the only Liberal in the Chamber was Francis Drouin, though Mark Gerretsen would replace him later in the hour. Erin O’Toole led off, accusing the government of hiding a security breach at the National Microbiology Lab. Jennifer O’Connell warned that O’Toole was playing a dangerous game, and that redacted documents were provided to the Canada-China committee and the unredacted documents went to NSICOP. O’Toole accused her of participating in a cover-up, and O’Connell accused O’Toole of not caring about national security. O’Toole scoffed, noting his military service, and worried there was a Chinese “infiltration” at the Lab, which O’Connell countered with a prof at the Royal Military College praising NSICOP. O’Toole then repeated his first question in French, got the same answer as before, adding that she used to be a member of NSICOP so she could vouch for its security. O’Toole repeated his allegation of a cover-up in French, and O’Connell, exasperated, noted that she wasn’t sure how many more times she could say that they turned over the documents in the appropriate way.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, accusing the government of trying to create a new pan-Canadian securities regulator which Quebec opposed. Sean Fraser noted that the office cooperated voluntarily with provinces. Therrien tried again, and Fraser repeated that Quebec was not bound to work with that office.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and he condescended to the government about the WE Imbroglio, and demanded that the government respect the Ethics committee’s report. Bardish Chagger thanked the committee for the work, but accused them of being more interested in partisan games. Charlie Angus then repeated the demand in English with added sanctimony and stretched the credulity of the allegations, and Pablo Rodriguez batted away the insinuations.

Round two, and Richard Martel dove into the moral panic over judicial appointments (Virani: The system is merit-based), Michael Barrett repeated this nonsense in English (Virani: Same answer), before Barrett then raised the Ethics committee’s report on the WE Imbroglio (Rodriguez: We respect the role of committees and independent officers of power, and we remain focused on Canadians).

Marilène Gill complained that comparisons were being made to intolerance, Islamophobia and Quebec’s Bill 21 (Virani: Quebeckers are defending their rights in the courts and we are monitoring the situation), and insisted that it was irresponsible to make any connection to Bill 21 and the hate crime in London (Virani: Same answer).

Pierre Paul-Hus, James Bezan, and Leona Alleslev demanded answers on when concerns were raised about the Iraqi troops our soldiers were training (Vandenbeld: There is an investigation underway, and we take all incidents seriously).

Lindsay Mathyssen worried about students not being able to find jobs in the summer (Chagger: We are assisting students, and we could have been debating the waiving of student loan interest today but the Conservatives are holding this up), and Jack Harris demanded an end to the “torture” of solitary confinement (Blair: We are ending administrative segregation, and we will work to ensure it is replaced by the legislation we have brought forward).

Round three saw questions on housing prices (Hussen: We have done a lot under the national housing strategy, which you don’t support), re-opening the border (O’Connell: We have been trying to keep Canadians safe in the face of a global pandemic, and all of our measures were done with expert advice), a demand that the government bigfoot the CRTC on the creation of a three-digit suicide prevention hotline (O’Connell: We have increased resources to help Canadians), the moral panic over judicial appointments (Virani: Our appointments are always based on merit), demands that a committee study the creation of a technocratic appointment system (Virani: Committees decide what they want to study), temporary foreign workers (Schiefke:We are ensuring that Quebec gets the workers they need), softwood lumber tariffs (Ng: I raise this issue at every opportunity), funding for finding graves at residential school sites (Bennett: We are committed to collaborative discussions on how we foster the healing), the Beijing Olympics (Garneau: We have announced sanctions against Chinese officials, but the Canadian Olympic Committee is independent), the Canada-US trade file (Ng: We firmly reject any attempt by Americans to resurrect country of origin labelling), gang violence (Blair: We have  increased resources to combat it), residential school graves (Bennett: It is up to communities to determine their ceremonies and processes), and climate targets (Wilkinson: We are taking strong and meaningful action).

Overall, the continued attempts by the Conservatives to build a conspiracy theory around the Winnipeg lab firings and to politicise NSICOP remain concerning because it’s like they don’t care about the erosion to institutions that they are fostering. There are ways to ask questions around what happened, or even to demand the documents in Parliament, without either feeding those conspiracy theories or politicising NSICOP, but they won’t do that, probably because they figure that the way they’re doing it now is better fodder for social media shitposting and fundraising letters. Way to go there. I also continue to be utterly exhausted by the constant moral panic around the judicial appointments process (fostered by the completely irresponsible reporting by one particular journalist who is currently at the CBC), and the fact that the Bloc keep demanding nothing less than the abrogation of Responsible Government around these appointments is concerning – but again, the government has very few reasonable responses to these questions, and relies on weak assurances that the system is based on merit rather than debunking the talking points being spouted (or fanned by the aforementioned irresponsible reporting).

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

2 thoughts on “QP: Security breach and securities regulators”

  1. The Cons know that they can get away with their lies and shenanigans in QP because it is a fact that the majority of Canadian voters don’t hear what goes on in the HOC. There should be no worries come election time because Canadians will see that the Cons have no policies to offer them, the bloc mean nothing to the ROC and the NDP has become a fringe party that will never be elected to power along with the Greens who self destructing.

  2. The RepubliCon Party of Canada will be crowing about WeGhazi and Margaret Trudeau’s We-Mails for the next 100 years. Good gods above, nobody cares about this anymore, and the lobbying commissioner just cleared Rob Silver of Skippy’s fraudulent (and borderline anti-Semitic) witch hunt. They need to come up with some legitimate policies and quit the tin foil smear campaigns or STFU.

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