QP: Mary Ng will only apologise twice

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The prime minister was present today, while his deputy was off in Paris. Shortly before things got underway, the Ethics Commissioner released his report on a contract Mary Ng’s office awarded to a friend of hers, so that was also going to come up. All of the other leaders were present today, save Elizabeth May, for what it’s worth. After a statement about the passing of Jim Carr, Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he first offered condolences to Carr’s family and to the Liberal caucus for their loss. With that out of the way, he asked about the list of soon-to-be banned hunting rifles and wanted more work on fighting criminals instead. Justin Trudeau thanked Poilievre for his thoughts about Carr, and said a few nice words about Carr’s legacy in both French and in English. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the question about “Grandpa Joe’s hunting rifle in Cape Breton” versus criminals, and this time, Trudeau insisted that Canadians are united about keeping communities safer from assault weapons, but they needed to ensure the ban stays in place, which is why they were moving ahead with their legislation but they would continue to consult to ensure they are capturing the right weapons. Poilievre raised the concerns of his backbench MPs about those weapons, and tried to insist this was a big plot against hunters. Trudeau dismissed this as misinformation and said they were going to continue to consult on the list because they were not interested in hunters, but the Conservatives only wanted to make assault weapons legal again. Poilievre then changed topics to story about immigration case files assigned to employees who are no longer there, to which Trudeau read some pabulum lines about modernising the system and resolving the “technical issues.” Poilievre changed topics again to the Ethics Commissioner’s finding that Mary Ng violated the rules in giving a contract to a friend, which he tried to tie to other previous scandals. Trudeau instead countered with some crowing about last night’s by-election victory in Mississauga—Lakeshore and how Canadians rejected Poilievre instead.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and after giving condolence about Jim  he concern trolled about immigration levels in Quebec before raising the story about the case files going to phantom employees before demanding that Quebec be given full control over its immigration system. Trudeau said that Quebec has the capacity to take more immigrants and they are there to help them with it. Blanchet insisted that Roxham Road-arriving asylum claimants were difficult to integrate and demanded more control over the system. Trudeau reiterated that they did not set a target for Quebec and they were there to work with the province.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, demanded the government do something about the paediatric health crisis in the country. Trudeau said that they realise there is a crisis, but they are not going to send a blank cheque like the NDP wants and will ensure they get outcomes. Singh repeated his demand to “find solutions” in English, and Trudeau repeated his response.

Round two, and Jasraj Hallan gave his usual word salad about government spending, inflation and “taxes” (Boissonnault: Let me first talk about how great Jim Carr was), and equated the Mary Ng story with inflation and carbon prices (Gould: The Canada Child Benefit is helping nine out of ten families), Melissa Lantsman raised the statistic about household debt levels (Boissonnault: We are helping Canadians while you aren’t; Fraser: We believe we can help people in an affordability crisis while you guys want to do less for people), and Stephen Ellis railed about carbon pricing in Atlantic Canada (Hutchings: I am proud we announced a plan to get people off of heating oil; Fraser: Your math ignores that most families get more money back).

Mario Simard returned to carrying water for the premiers’ demands for money with no strings attached (Duclos: Things are difficult, but we have been increasing transfers while we need to do things differently), and Luc Thériault raised the wait lists in Quebec (LeBlanc: We are continuing to hold discussions at multiple levels with provinces, and we want funding to lead to actual results).

Tim Uppal worried about the immigration backlog and the applications sent to phantom employees (Fraser: We are going to process every case in the inventory, and the codes for inactive employees is a function of the processing system in each centre), and Pierre Paul-Hus tried again (Fraser: Your accusation isn’t true, and here is why we use those codes, and our plan is working).

Lindsay Mathyssen criticised the government response to the Arbour Report (Anand: This Time is different because we are ensuring we are getting it done), and Jenny Kwan returned to the immigration backlog/phantom employee story (Fraser: There are applications that were tied to officers no longer with the department but we maintain those codes to fully trace them).

Round three saw questions on removing mandatory minimums versus their gun control bill (Lametti: The change is about reducing the over-incarceration of Black and Indigenous people; Conditional sentence orders are only available where the is no threat to public order and the judge is best place to make that determination; Mendicino: Our gun control bill gives police more powers to go after organised crime), CRA going after companies who were ineligible for supports even when it means bankruptcy (Lebouthillier: The CRA has verification work to do, and the work is unfolding, and we also need to recover funds), Transport Canada not meeting official language requirements (Petitpas Taylor: We are looking at recommendations and are enhancing tools in our bill), the Mary Ng story (Ng: I take full responsibility and I should have recused myself, but there was no intention for any inappropriate enrichment, and it won’t happen again; Holland: The minister already apologised and has answer the question), carbon prices (Duguid: You are spreading misinformation; Wilkinson: Your only climate plan was the 2008 recession; Boisonnault: When will you actually have the backs of Canadians, and we won that by-election), the gun control bill (Mendicino: We are listening to Indigenous people and are making space for them; Vandal: We have been extremely clear we are not targeting hunting rifles).

Overall, it was a really mixed bag today. On the one hand, there was a little too much use of QP to make statements about Jim Carr, to the detriment of questions and answers. And Trudeau avoiding answering about the Ng controversy by crowing about the by-election win was weak sauce. I appreciated that he pushed back against the notion of blank cheques for provinces around healthcare, and that Sean Fraser had good answers about the story around immigration files being assigned to employee codes where those employees were no longer with the department.

On the other hand, the legitimate questions around the gun ban affecting hunting rifles continues to be subjected to ineffective questions around “Grandpa Joe’s hunting rifle” and the insistence that this is about them targeting hunters and farmers, or conflating this issue with the ending of certain mandatory minimum sentences, rather than hammering them on their incompetence in not doing their homework on the guns they were proposing to ban. There is so much to legitimately criticise here, but they are just not able to be serious about it. As for the questions about Mary Ng, the government was not having the tactic of having a line-up of different faces to decry it and demand her resignation (even though this is not a resignation offence), she answered twice, and then Mark Holland stepped in and pointed out she already answered, and essentially let it be known that they’re not going to let the carousel of shitpost clip-gathering go unchallenged.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Terry Beech for a tailored black suit with a crisp white shirt and a cranberry tie and pocket square, and to Michelle Rempel Garner for a fitted black leather jacket over a white top. Style citations go out to Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné for a grey spotted v-necked top with a comical pussy bow under a black jacket and slacks, and to Fraser Tolmie for a tan three-piece suit with a windowpane pattern over a white shirt with a blue tie and pocket square.

3 thoughts on “QP: Mary Ng will only apologise twice”

  1. We’ve seen in the past what provinces do when the feds give the provinces money for health care … and then pass it on to their citizens in the form of cheques, like we saw this past year with Ontario getting rid of licence plate/ sticker renewals … $1billion a year in lost revenue that could have gone a long way to getting our paediatric hospitals out of the crisis that they’re now in.

    Singh is ultimately very naive in insisting our Liberal government send blank cheques to the provinces without conditions relating to outcomes and with a guarantee on how the money is going to be spent … I want any money sent to the provinces to be spent on improving our healthcare system!!! Singh needs a history lesson on what happened in the past when the Feds transferred healthcare money … Mike Harris Conservatives in Ontario, Jean Charest in Quebec, not to mention Alberta and Saskatchewan. And we haven’t even got into the tax points the provinces get … and how they use it … which nobody in the mainstream media wants to discuss (Wanna know why you guys are becoming irrelevant!!??)

    If Singh is hoping to gain votes by insisting on health transfers without accountability … we’re going to see a Liberal majority if he decides to end his agreement with the Libs.

  2. Thanks for the comments, Bob. The quicker Singh pulls his plug the quicker Trudeau calls an election and beats both the NDP and Polly-never into the dust bin. I say no healthcare deal with the provinces without strings, period. Singh still needs a civics lesson re. jurisdictions, but that isn’t going to happen so we will be subjected to his twisted ideas until he is gone!

  3. The problem with immigration started 11 years ago when a new computer system was installed. The entire system is computer controlled and has no human oversight. Files are assigned by computers to various officers. The glitch now is that the turnover of staff is great and the computers are not geared to no longer assigned a file to officers who have left. So the files go into a limbo situation. The new system was said to resolve all problems and that managers would supervise work done by officers. This of course was never done and now we have this crisis. I am just imagining how management is now running around trying to find a solution to this and do not have the staff to do the work. Another backlog.

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