QP: Lying about the price of lettuce

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Before things could get underway, a whole batch of new MPs needed to be brought in to take their seats—Liberals Ben Carr and Anna Gainey, and Conservatives Arpam Khanna, Branden Leslie and Shuvaloy Majumdar. When things got underway in earnest, Pierre Poilievre led off in French, blaming the prime minister of causing “housing hell” and demanded action to fix it. Justin Trudeau recited some pat talking points about helping Canadians and calling grocery CEOs. Poilievre quoted John Manley in claiming deficits were driving inflation, and demanded the government end the so-called “inflationary deficits.” Trudeau read the talking points about helping to build more apartments while repeating his boast about the grocery CEOs. Poilievre repeated his first question in English, and this time Trudeau read some good-news talking points about the deal in London, Ontario, which was the first deal but not the last. Poilievre repeated his second question in English with an added factoid about housing starts being down, and Trudeau read some good-news talking points about Calgary agreeing to federal conditions for more dollars. Poilievre again demanded a balanced budget, and Trudeau accused him of empty slogans and cited his record of bungling housing when he was minister, and then recited some points about the policy convention votes.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, he demanded solutions and not “scapegoats,” and accused the government of withholding $900 million from Quebec. Trudeau praised their Accelerator Fund and removing GST on new apartments, but didn’t address the allegation. Therrien repeated the demand, and Trudeau said the Bloc are only there to squabble, and repeated his same pabulum points.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he railed that the government was not punishing grocery CEOs, to which Trudeau insisted that they were making corporations pay their fair share, and Trudeau again raised the meeting with the CEOs and upcoming changes to competition legislation. Singh switched to French to accuse the government of allowing a loss of affordable housing units under their watch, and Trudeau repeated his same points in French.

Round two, and Poilievre got back up to rail about food prices and falsely blamed it on the carbon price, and then demanded to know if the cost of lettuce would be down by Thanksgiving (Champagne: We are taking action!), and tried to needle the Bloc about the carbon price (Guilbeault: A responsible government needs to deal with climate change while making things affordable for Canadians), Luc Berthold took his own turn to needle the Bloc (Guilbeault: Given the forest fires, there are bigger challenges than carrots; Our green innovations will lead to jobs including in agriculture), and John Barlow again falsely blamed the price of lettuce on the carbon price, which is false (Champagne: We are taking action on the grocery giants; Guilbeault: Look at the plans to use canola for biofuels).

Kristine Michaud accused the government of not taking climate change seriously (Guilbeault: We are the country in the G7 that has the biggest reductions and we are doing more; Dabrusin: We are taking climate change seriously and the minster is at the UN to push for decarbonisation; Guilbeault: We have an adaptation plan that has won plaudits).

Jake Stewart returned to the falsehood about the price of lettuce (Freeland: People need more homes but your leader thinks they will get built by magic), Rick Perkins worried about the price of cabbage (Fraser: Atlantic Canadians are hurting because of climate change), John Williamson worried about the price of carrots (Champagne: Canadians watching must feel pretty insulted by what the other side is saying).

Alexandre Boulerice demanded more action against grocery CEOs (Champagne: We are giving new powers to the Competition Commissioner), and Lori Idlout worried there wasn’t enough housing construction in the North over the summer (Vandal: We signed off on a number of programmes for the north).

Round three saw questions on housing prices (Freeland: Mike Moffatt praised our move to eliminate GST; Fraser: We have plan while you tinker around the edges; Freeland: We are working in with grocery CEOs to stabilise prices; Fraser: You like to assign blame but have not real solutions; Hajdu: When Poilievre led the housing file, his fund build a mere 99 houses in Indigenous communities; Freeland: We have the best balance sheet in the G7 and your austerity would go after child care and dental care; Martinez Ferrada: We provide leadership not a leader who treats municipal leaders with contempt), that a Quebec bid for an Afghanistan War monument was overruled (Petitpas Taylor: The majority of the comments from veterans felt the other design met their needs), blaming food price inflation on carbon prices (Fraser: You may have missed how your party voted against help for Canadians; Holland: We need to focus on solutions but your only solution is austerity; MacAulay: Fiona destroyed farms and we need to invest in climate change), wildfires (Sajjan: We need to make sure we have the right resources at the right places at the right time), and a permanent national task force for climate events (Sajjan: I look forward to listening to your ideas).

Overall, there was nothing really ground-breaking or explosive in the exchanges that happened (the explosive part took place after QP with the revelation of the involvement of Indian agents in an extra-judicial killing in BC), because the lines were all repeated and tired. Poilievre and then every other one of his MPs played talking points MadLibs, where they just filled in a few blanks between the lines, as they tried to make their latest, “not worth the cost,” part of the other litany of lines that they keep trying to memeify. In amidst these canned lines, Poilievre and several of his MPs also tried to tie things like the price of lettuce to the carbon price, which is utter bullshit. The carbon price has contributed something like 0.15 percent to inflation, and food price inflation is due largely to climate-related effects that are wiping out yields, whether it’s drought or flash floods. In the case of lettuce, the heat fuelled a pathogen that wiped out the crops in California, and prices have spiked as a result because of limited supply. For Poilievre to not only push this falsehood was bad enough, but for the government to not refute any of it and just mouth their usual pabulum is dereliction.

Bottom line is that absolutely nothing changed over the summer. This is the same broken dynamic where we get nothing but mendacity from one side of the Chamber, and the happy-clappy pabulum lines from the other, and the longer QP goes on when the Conservatives keep repeating the same lines over and over again, the more Liberal ministers that keep getting up to trot out their own canned lines, and it’s all in service of generating clips for their socials. This whole exercise has lost its relevance, and all MPs need to do some serious soul-searching about what the hell they think they’re doing.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Peter Schiefke for a dark blue suit over a white shirt and a dark pink tie, and to Kelly Block for a bright fuchsia jacket over a black top and slacks. Style citations go out to Rachael Thomas for a short-sleeved navy dress with pink and red florals, and to Mark Gerretsen for a dark blue jacket over a light blood shirt, a navy patterned tie, and khaki slacks.