QP: The elephant in the Speaker’s Chair

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While the prime minister was in town, he was meeting with BC premier David Eby while QP was going on. It shouldn’t have been going on. The Speaker, Anthony Rota, should have resigned when the House opened at 11 AM, which should have triggered a new election for Speaker and suspend proceedings for the day. That didn’t happen. Pierre Poilievre started off in French, and gravely intoned about the news on Friday that the House of Commons gave a standing ovation to a former Nazi, and that this embarrassed Canada and handed propaganda to Russia, but insisted that only the prime minister was responsible and demanded he do so publicly. Karina Gould stood up to say that she was extremely disappointed with the situation and as a descendent of a Holocaust survivor, she was extremely disappointed, but Poilievre knows that the decision was the Speaker’s alone and that neither the government nor the Ukrainian delegation knew about it ahead of time. Poilievre switched to English and insisted that the question was for the prime minister—who was not in the room, but he wanted to play the game of pretending Trudeau is simply not answering—and demanded an apology to the PM for “vetting” the individual but letting him in anyway (which is not what happened). Gould stated that she found out only when the was introduced by the Speaker, and made a call not to politicise the issue. Poilievre insisted that because Trudeau is in Ottawa today, he needed to stand up and take responsibility for this, and apologise for it. Gould again said that she was personally very hurt by this and that this as not the government’s issue, and to not politicise it. Poilievre repeated his same demand for an apology for this diplomatic inside the, and got another plea not to policies this. Poilievre insisted that Canadians were tired of a government who blames everyone else for their failures, and wondered if the Speaker was being thrown under the bus this time. Gould insisted that everyone was caught off-guard.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and noted that the Russians are using this event for propaganda, and asked what the government would do to repair the damage from Friday’s incident. Gould repeated her line that this was very painful and asks everyone to work responsibly. Therrien repeated the demand to know what the government would do, and Gould repeated her same lines.

Jenny Kwan rose for the NDP, and she started with saying Friday’s incident never should have occurred, before worrying about housing and demanded  an acquisition fund to stop the loss of low-cost rentals to profiteering landlords. Sean Fraser says that the government needs to make investments in low-cost financing to build homes and to invest in affordable housing. Kwan insisted the government was not meeting the need. Fraser said that increasing the supply of market housing was not enough on its own, it still needs to happen as part of the solution.

Round two, Marty Morantz again blamed the PMO for not vetting the visitor (Gould: This was disturbing, but the government was not aware he was invited and this was solely the prerogative of the Speaker), Andrew Scheer breathily insisted that he was Speaker when they changed the law so Parliamentary security reports to the govern (Gould: Security screening was properly followed but he was not vetted by the government; We all found about about his presence at the same time when he was introduced), and Pierre Paul-Hus repeated the same blame of the PMO in French (Gould: We are all disturbed and disappointed by this event).

Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné blamed the government of driving small business into bankruptcy by not extending the deadline for CEBA repayment (Martinez Ferrada: We are offering flexibility: May: Same answer), and Yves Perron blamed the government of not surprising farmers enough (MacAulay: Climate change is affecting farms and we have programmes to help assist farmers).

Dane Lloyd railed that the government didn’t vet everyone in the building (Gould: All protocols were followed but this was profoundly embarrassing), James Bezan demanded apologies to all Ukrainians (Gould: This was profoundly disappointing for all Canadians).

Blake Desjarlais worried about corporate landlords (Fraser: We will make investments into non-market housing, but more market based housing will bring down all prices), and Don Davies demanded a national school lunch programme—which is more properly a provincial responsibility (Holland: We have reduced child poverty, but this isn’t good enough we are working with provinces on a national food policy).

Round three saw questions on vetting that guest on Friday (LeBlanc: The Parliamentary Protective Service reports to the two Speakers; Gould: The Speaker has stated repeatedly that this was his initiative alone), climate targets (Guilbeault: Canada has the best GHG reduction record and we are the only G20 country to have cut subsidies), the backlog of complaints at the CTA (Rodriguez: We are making changes to ensure that this process will be much faster), and tax laws hurting local companies competing with multinationals (Freeland: We tax system is based on data, and we will always implement laws based on data and the advice of experts).

Overall, it was just an awful day on a number of levels. The biggest issue was that Rota, who is personally implicated in what happened, just sat there in his chair half-assedly playing referee while questions about his conduct were being levelled at the government. It was especially gross that this meant that Karina Gould, who is Jewish, was being forced to eat shit on Rota’s behalf, while he sat there. Rota, who should have resigned, should not have been there for QP, and should have had one of his deputies take the chair if he wasn’t going to resign (which he should), because he was compromised and implicated in all of this. And the fact that there was so much procedural chaos after QP as a result of the fallout from this was even more to the point that Rota is not only compromised, but beyond his depth in managing the situation. It’s untenable.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives were operating entirely in bad faith in trying to pin this entirely on the PMO, and were deliberately conflating security screening and political vetting—the 98-year-old passed security screening, unsurprisingly, but he wasn’t vetted politically, because the Speaker doesn’t report to the PMO, and Rota didn’t tell anyone about this, or that he would be recognising him in the Chamber as part of his speech. They used that conflation deliberately so as to create clips for shitposts—because that’s why everything happens—for the sake of scoring points. It’s also a little curious why the Conservatives seem very willing to protect Rota, when there is reason why he should keep his job. They should also be joining the Bloc and NDP in demanding his resignation, and the fact that they don’t want that to happen is certainly notable.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Shelby Kramp-Neuman for a fuchsia jacket over a navy dress, and to Chris Bittle for a dark grey suit with a light purple shirt and a dark purple tie. Style citations go out to Angelo Iacono for a light blue and grey windowpane jacket over a white shirt and a navy tie, and to Helena Jaczek over a dark pink jacket over a black dress with big florals.