QP: Going hard for March for Life day

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Despite being in town, the prime minister was not in QP today, though his deputy was, fresh from an appearance at committee. All of the other leaders were also absent, leaving Andrew Scheer to lead off in English, reciting a couple of slogans before giving some ignorant talking points about government spending, inflation, and interest rates, which had as much credibility as a crypto bro video on YouTube. Chrystia Freeland said that as it was her first opportunity to speak in the House today, she wanted to raise a grave threat—Pierre Poilievre saying that he wants to tear up Charter Rights, and that today, the so-called “March for Life” on the Hill, Conservative MPs were outside attacking a women’s right to choose, and that this proves Conservatives would attack the rights of every woman in Canada. Scheer insisted that she was trying to deflect, and cited a Desjardins report about a national measure, and demanded she “cut up the government credit card.” Freeland said that the Conservatives were upset because people are starting to see them flirt with white supremacists and threatening to tear up the Charter. Scheer insisted that they would take no lessons, because the government was trying to control the internet, before raising Mark Carney’s testimony at a Senate committee yesterday, capped off by reciting slogans. Freeland went on a paean about the rights of women to control their own body, and invited the Conservatives to affirm this right. Gérard Deltell took over in a French, and raised that July 1st is “moving day” in Quebec, and demanded to know what the government is doing about rent (which is provincial jurisdiction). Freeland went on a Quebec-specific paean about women’s rights to bodily autonomy. Deltell insisted that all Quebec women and everyone else in the country was suffering from the government’s so-called “inflationary policies.” Freeland once again insisted that women have a right to control their own body, and that there were Conservatives outside at the anti-abortion rally.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc to again return to the non-issue of Francis Drouin’s outburst at committee and demanded he resign from his Francophonie role. Freeland raised the Bloc for standing up for women’s rights before noting their support for the French language. Therrien repeated his demand, and Freeland repeated her praise for their investments in French.

Alexandre Boulerice railed about grocery CEO profits, and accused the government of a sweet deal with then. Freeland praised their changes to competition law as an important step. Alistair MacGregor repeated the same in English, and Freeland this time praised their plan to make those at the top pay a little more with the capital changes, before repeating the point about competition reform.

Round two, and Jasraj Hallan recited an angry word-salad about the carbon levy (Fraser: Your own leader wants to increase taxes on apartment construction; MacKinnon: You want to show up some smokescreens because of your bad couple of weeks, and you have a nomination candidate alleging corruption in the process), Scot Davidson read his own script about the carbon levy (Wilkinson: I’m disappointed you would spread this disinformation about the price), and Pierre Paul-Hus railed about the Bloc voting for public appropriations (Champagne: Hooray our excellent civil servants, and our plan is serious; Champoux: Conservatives would cut the civil servants who deliver services to Canadians). 

Martin Champoux railed about the rumoured plan to being CBC and Radio-Canada closer together (Noormohamed: If you want to protect Radio-Canada, you have to also protect CBC; Boissonnault: It is important to have a public broadcaster for French Canadians outside of Quebec).

Bob Zimmer blamed the carbon price for food insecurity in the North (Vandal: You keep voting against our measures to help Canadian families), and Jeremy Patzer blamed the carbon levy on food bank use (Sudds: Hooray for our school food programme).

Leah Gazan said the Liberals were no better than the Conservatives on abortion rights because of New Brunswick—where the government did claw back health transfers because of it, and they can’t do anything more because that’s solely a provincial jurisdiction (Hepfner: Hooray rights of women, and we are working on it), and Bonita Zarrillo blamed the Liberals for airlines not ensuring disability access on airlines (Rodriguez: We have to find solutions with everyone in the sector).

Round three saw yet more misleading questions on opioids (Saks: Dying from a toxic supply and this is public health rather than criminalising people; In Alberta, where cut other harm reduction, deaths are increasing astronomically; You continue to mislead Canadians; Hajdu: This is about all of our grief, which is why we work with doctors and scientists). It also saw questions on consultants versus civil servants versus Quebec’s jurisdiction (MacKinnon: We stand up for a strong civil service), more money for Quebec for asylum seekers (Miller: You’re not invite to my meeting with my provincial counterparts tomorrow), rent costs in Quebec (Duclos: When your leader was “housing minister” he only built six units; Champagne: You can’t build an economy with slogans), allegations around a minister (MacKinnon: You won’t repeat this outside of the House; you have a green light from Campaign Life Coalition), a sex offender whose status was allegedly changed to be hospitalised because the service didn’t want to pay for guards (LeBlanc: You exaggerate and distort events to score points), oil and emissions (Guilbeault: The national inventory report shows how our emissions have gone down, but we are doing more), and the protest encampment at U of T (Khera: Local authorities are investigating but we support freedom of speech and combatting hate).

Overall, it was “March for Life” day on the Hill—the annual celebration of Catholic school kids from the region being bussed to Ottawa to participate because it’s a day off of classes—and so the Liberals were determined to go hard on it, with the NDP and Bloc doing so to a smaller extent. That meant that Chrystia Freeland pretty much ignored whatever was asked of her in order to deliver talking points either in support of a woman’s right to choose, or to warn that the Conservatives would take that right away. Having minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada talk about her own experiences with needing to return to Canada to have an abortion because she couldn’t in Chile was something new this year (and afterward, there was a lineup of MPs from across the aisle to give her a hug for her story). I do question NDP MP Leah Gazan’s choice of trying to cast the Liberals and Conservatives in the same light on abortion rights because they can’t force a province to provide services was both crass and frankly a little bit gross, because federalism is a reality.

As for the Conservatives, I was surprised that they didn’t spend yet another day going all-out on the opioid crisis, considering that it was the subject of their Supply Day motion (well, a misleading version of events in any case). That meant that they were largely back to their well-worn and still fully misleading talking points about the carbon levy and blaming it for everything under the sun, because of course they were. Some things never change (unfortunately).

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Maninder Sidhu for a tailored dark grey suit with a crisp white shirt and a dark purple tie, and to Julie Dzerowicz for a white jacket and top over black slacks. Style citations go out to Yvonne Jones for a multi-coloured and multi-patterned smock over a black top and slacks, and to Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe for his tan brown jacket over a white shirt, black striped tie, and blue jeans.