QP: No, that’s not what the inflation data show

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While the prime minister moved from hotel to at-home quarantine, his deputy was available instead. While there were fewer Conservatives in the Chamber than yesterday, the sole Liberal in the Chamber started out as Marie-France Lalonde instead of Mark Gerretsen, but they swapped places a short while later. Erin O’Toole led off in French, with a script in front of him, and he blamed federal spending for the decade-high inflation figures released this morning — which is not actually what those data showed. Chrystia Freeland declared that the biggest threat to economic stability was Conservative partisan games. O’Toole switched to English to focus on the rise in housing prices, and again seemed to think that the federal government has magic levers that can lower housing prices, to which Freeland repeated her assertion, given that they are blocking the budget bill. O’Toole retorted that the Conservatives had a Five-Point Plan™ to save the economy, and Freeland repeated that the Conservatives were standing in the way of the economic recovery. O’Toole then pivoted to a torqued reading of Harjit Sajjan’s record as minster, for which Sajjan robotically read that he won’t take lessons from the Conservatives and he was doing better. O’Toole then declared that he would speak directly to the voters in Sajjan’s riding, exhorting them to vote for Conservatives, and Sajjan stated that he was proud of his service, and raised the Conservatives’ record on abortion and Islamophobia.

For the Bloc, Yves-François Blanchet raised the new federal bill on Official Languages and how it counters Quebec’s Bill 96, and Mélanie Joly said that they were asking all parties to support their bill. Blanchet insisted that Quebec’s bill was threatened, and Joly stated that they would strengthen Official Languages and protect French.

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and after railing about big banks in French, he complained that the government was cutting pandemic supports. Freeland stated that unless the budget bill passes, all supports will end. Singh switched to English to reiterate the question with some additional meandering around big corporations. Freeland asked in response why he was stopping supports by not helping to pass the budget.

Round two, and Candice Bergen offered some scripted concern about morale in the military and wondered in the minister ever spoke to the prime minister about the problem of sexual misconduct (Sajjan: We have committed to culture change and put money toward it), and demand Sajjan’s resignation (Sajjan: While you make political cheap shots, we are focused on the Canadian Forces), and Richard Martel took over to repeat the demands for Sajjan’s resignation in French (Sajjan: We undertaking making culture change and appointed Justice Louise Arbour).

Christine Normandin demanded that the government let Quebec extend its language laws to federal workplaces (Joly: You want a dispute that doesn’t really exist).

James Bezan gave another torqued reading of Harjit Sajjan’s record and called for him to be fired (Sajjan: You were parliamentary secretary for defence in the previous government when they slashed spending), and accused him of creating a national security crisis (Sajjan: Same answer), and Raquel Dancho questioned Sajjan’s honour and feminist credentials to demand his resignation (Sajjan: We have more work to do, and we have more spending toward this in the budget).

Charlie Angus gave a misleading reading of the litigation around First Nations children in care (Miller: We are committed to fair and equitable compensation), and Gord Johns raised a court challenge of Indigenous fishing rights (Jordan: We are working with the First Nation to ensure their rights are upheld).

Round three saw questions on inflation (Freeland: The greatest threat to our economy is Conservative partisanship as they block the budget), the Official Languages bill vis-à-vis Quebec’s Bill 96 (Joly: You should stop fear-mongering), making Winnipeg Lab notes available to US investigators looking into the Wuhan lab (Garneau: We support the search for the origins of the pandemic), and a Chinese scientist working at the Lab (Hajdu: This is a secure facility and everyone working there goes through screenings), turning over documents about the Lab (Hajdu: You are conflating issues but we have turned them over to NSICOP), and First Nations asking for help to search for more graves (Bennett: We are working with communities and partners to provide all of the resources and supports that they determine they need).

Overall, it was a bit of a dispiriting day because of the blatant misinformation around the inflation statistics that kept getting thrown around, and did Chrystia Freeland offer any kind of correction of call bullshit on it in any way? Of course not – she stuck to her talking point that the greatest economic threat that the country is facing is Conservative obstruction. Because seriously, there are some seriously distortionary narratives that the Conservatives have been throwing around that it would behove the Finance Minister to actually provide some fact checking to, but that’s not what we got.

The other narrative being chased was the repeated call for the defence minister, Harjit Sajjan, to either resign or be fired, which went right up to O’Toole performatively declaring that he was addressing the voters in Sajjan’s riding. And I agree that Sajjan needs to step down for the sake of ministerial responsibility, but yet again, the Conservatives are going about this in a way that is the most cartoonish as possible so as to try and actually makes Sajjan look sympathetic (though he did himself zero favours by robotically reading his talking points in response and stumbling though half of them). It should be inconceivable that they are as bad at their own jobs as they are, and that they are so inept at the job of holding the government to account that a wounded minister who should be put down is actually being helped by their antics. It’s just so depressing to watch.

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

One thought on “QP: No, that’s not what the inflation data show”

  1. Per the Globe and their resident Gawker gossip hound Bobby Fife, it looks like the government could fall on a contempt-of-parliament motion, over the Liberals refusing to compromise national security by feeding into the Cons’ preposterous and racist “Chinese spies” conspiracy theory. I’m sure Justin Trudeau is terrified of the opposition being faulted for the resulting election. The cons seem to forget the eventual outcome of Milliken’s 2010 ruling that they keep going back to over and over again: Harper’s majority.

    No one serious thinks COVID-19 was a Canadian bioweapon or that Justin Trudeau is the Manchurian Canada Date. No one would care about the ostensible “motive” for the government falling, just that the opposition pushed the country into a pandemic election. Pulling the trigger over tin foil nonsense, the likes of which one might see on Infowars or Fox News, would hand the QAnonservative Party of Canada and their lackeys a well-deserved, crushing defeat. Trudeau would have little effort to make but to lay back in his quarantine room and watch the GQP North shoot themselves in the foot yet again.

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