QP: Outright lying about the Ukraine trade deal

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The prime minister was present while his deputy was not. All other leaders were in the Chamber, so it was going to be a spectacle. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and asked for an update about the incident in Niagara Falls, which he attributed to a terrorist event (which was far too early to determine at the time, which seem to have been disproven), to which Justin Trudeau stated that a vehicle blew up on the Rainbow Bridge, and they were still gathering information, but that the border has been closed at additional locations. Poilievre repeated the request in English, but slipped in a “bring home” slogan in there, and got the same response, and then excused himself to go get further updates. Poilievre returned to French to decry that the $20 billion in new spending from the economic update would keep fuelling inflation. Randy Boissonneault insisted that the update would be good news. Poilievre got back up and asked “what’s up?”, paused, then listed things that he insisted were up before declaring “time’s up” for the government, and decried that $20 billion in English. Boissonnault repeated his good news points before lambasting the Conservatives for failing to vote for the legislation on the trade deal with Ukraine. Poilievre declared that the federal government “betrayed Ukraine” with a list of mostly falsehoods, but didn’t actually ask a question. Gould noted that if that were true, they would have voted for the bill, but they didn’t because of a red herring.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, hoped that the situation at the border would be as un-dramatic as possible, before decrying the empty box that was the economic update. Boissonnault gave his own well wishes for the situation the borders before deploying his good-news talking points. Blanchet then demanded that the government stop intruding in provincial jurisdiction around housing, to which Sean Fraser praised the deal with the Quebec government.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and asked for his own update on the border situation, to which Karina Gould gave some fairly bland assurances as there were no further details. Singh switched to French to decry that the housing funds in the fiscal update were backloaded two years. Marci Ien got up to praise the tax-free housing savings plan, insisting that it was working for young people.

Round two, and Pierre Poilievre got up to decry debt servicing costs, and accused the government of taking money from soldiers and nurses to pay to give to bankers—as though a lot of pension funds didn’t invest in those bonds (Bendayan: You only want to cut), then he demanded the Senate pass the bill on cutting the carbon price on farmers (O’Regan: Your former leader raised the retirement age in Davos, and you opposed free trade with Ukraine), Poilievre falsely accused the government of imposing a carbon price on Ukraine (Ng: Ukraine already prices pollution), accused the government of not supporting sending Canadian munition to Ukraine, which is of course patently false (Hussen: You chose to abandon Ukrainians; Virani: I was sitting with the ambassador of Ukraine when that vote happened).

Blanchet got back up to decry the lack of more funds for seniors and housing (Bendayan: This wasn’t a budget, it was an economic statement).

Poilievre got back up to blame the government for “starving” people before again demanding the Senate pass the carbon price-removal bill (van Koeverden: The Senate is independent of this place; You are trying to use your climate denial to cover your vote against the trade deals with Ukraine, who already prices carbon like most of Europe; Karina: People that “common sense conservatives” mean cuts to services they rely on; We support Canadians their time of need).

Singh not back up once more to decry the lack of new spending on housing for Indigenous communities (Fraser: We are making historic investments and have put billions into it), and demanded the emissions cap on the oil and gas sector (van Koeverden: We will impose a cap—but didn’t say when).

Round three saw questions on the Stellantis plant workers (Boissonnault: You don’t stand for workers or the green economy, and only one temporary foreign worker has been approved; There is no justification for what you are claiming; Turnbull: You have never been for workers), demanding more money for housing immediately (Fraser: It is necessary to invest in housing and we are making progress), the carbon price (van Koeverden: The agricultural is affected more than any other by climate change, and a carbon price is reducing our emissions; Ukrainian farmers are betrayed by the Conservatives; Gould: If you were concerned both the price of fuel and foods you would support our deal with Ukraine because that is driving global prices; MacAulay: You don’t even have a climate plan, and if you don’t deal with climate change it adds to the price of food), funding for Indigenous poverty (Hajdu: We are closing the gap, and we not going to stop), and critical infrastructure in the north to prepare for future wildfires (Sajjan: We are discussing with the territories).

Overall, it wasn’t quite the spectacle I was expecting, though it was clear that the other leaders came expecting it because they again took virtually all of the spots to maximize their time in the spotlight on what was supposed to be the day the PM took all of the questions. Nevertheless, there was a biting nastiness to some of the exchanges, and it was really unpleasant, particularly in the exchanges where the Ukraine free trade deal came up. The Liberals were insisting on bringing up the fact that the Conservatives voted against it, because it was entirely to be performative about carbon pricing—it’s in the treaty to ensure that there isn’t any unfair differentials for pricing and to ensure there isn’t “carbon leakage” as part of that trade deal, because each country has different carbon pricing mechanisms. This shouldn’t be that difficult, and it was nice that Mary Ng actually did get up to point out that they already price pollution, but Poilievre not only stood up and made the false claim that Canada was trying to force carbon prices on Ukraine “with the knife at their throats” to hurt them when they’re trying to rebuild, but to also falsely bring up the Hunka incident during the Zelenskyy visit and blame the prime minister directly (again, this was because Anthony Rota, the former Speaker, is an idiot and didn’t bother to do a background check before he sought to recognize him), is actually pretty gross. That Poilievre is going to lie like this in the House of Commons, and try to generate these kinds of clips for his future shitposts, is a very big problem that should not be allowed to stand.

Poilievre’s falsehoods didn’t stop with this. He also went on a tear about how the stories about temporary foreign workers at the Stellantis EV battery plant were about “replacement workers” was also about driving clips for shitposts. It wasn’t true, it’s not true, it’s been debunked numerous times, but once again, the government failed to actually explain what’s going on. No, they have bland assurances that these are Canadian jobs and that only one temporary foreign worker permit was approved, but didn’t say what the real issue is. Again. They keep doing this, and it’s so aggravating because they’re just giving Poilievre a licence to lie without any counter, or facts, or context to let people know what is going on.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to  Dominique Vien for a black jacket over a black dress, and to Arif Virani for a black suit with a very light purple shirt with a purple tie and a white pocket square. Style citations go out to Ryan Turnbull for a dark grey suit with a light grey shirt, a blue-grey and faded red striped tie and a light blue pocket square, and to Shelby Kramp-Neuman for a quasi-leopard print long-sleeved dress that had a slight shimmer to it.