Stephen Harper remained away from the House of Commons today, off in Montreal to address a conference, leaving Peter Van Loan to face off yet again with Thomas Mulcair. Mulcair tried to ask about the omnibus budget bill, and list off all of the items being cut or changed in it, but Van Loan responded with accusations that the NDP want Canada to bail out Europe, and – oh, wow, that set Mulcair off. On each of his first supplemental, it was a bit of a retort, but on the second, after Van Loan kept up the distraction message, Mulcair went off an angry, red-faced tangent about Canada’s place in the world, which he then tried to awkwardly segue to a question about EI changes in his last few seconds, but it just gave Van Loan more opportunity to praise Canada’s fiscal situation. That was almost too easy to goad him, really. When Peggy Nash tried to talk about why the government was worried about cuts instead of job creation, Jim Flaherty accused her of trying to delay a bill that would create jobs. Bob Rae then got up, and first schooled Jim Flaherty on how IMF transfers work before wondering why the government was so sure that Canada was such an island of fiscal stability in an interconnected global marketplace. Van Loan then recited some of John McCallum’s quotes on the European situation by means of a reply.

Continue reading →