It being National Aboriginal Day, there were a number of Members’ Statements to that effect, and after Jack Layton dispensed with a couple of cursory questions on the postal strike to kick off QP (where Harper assured him that the back-to-work legislation was in the interest of the public), Layton asked if Harper felt that things were moving too slowly when it comes to fixing the living conditions of people on First Nations reservations. Not at all, Harper said – look at all the progress we’ve made in all of these areas! Jonathan Genest-Jourdain and Linda Duncan then asked to further questions on the topic, to which John Duncan assured them that everything the government was doing for First Nations was great, citing their new National Panel on K-12 education. Bob Rae returned to the postal strike, asking questions on specific provisions of the back-to-work legislation (Harper: We’re offering the same wage as other public servants), and closed off by asking about the government’s plans to cut the audit service of Public Works (Harper: We’re eliminating duplicative areas).
Round two was kicked off with Nycole Turmel asking about the very same job cuts (Jacques Gourde: We’re dealing with the least efficient programmes), Charlie Angus and Alexandre Boulerice asked about the revelations of a potential criminal investigation into the government’s misappropriating the money for the G8 Legacy Fund (John Baird, unsurprisingly, denied any wrongdoing as there was “no overspending”), and Sylvain Chicoine, Jasbir Sandhu and Françoise Boivin each asked about a public inquiry in the G20 mass-arrests (Vic Toews: There are appropriate complaint bodies, this is a provincial issue). Denis Coderre returned to the issue of the RCMP looking into the G8 fund misappropriation (Baird: This was just a PR stunt from a defeated Liberal), Joyce Murray asked about the Audit Services cuts (Gourde: see above), and Scott Andrews asked about the cuts to Fisheries (Ashfield gave a stock response). Peter Julian then asked about the TSX takeover deal and once again used the hated “hastag fail” WHICH THEY NEED TO STOP USING (Mike Lake: We’re conducting a review), and Raymond Côté asked about what the government was doing for small business (Maxime Bernier: We’re doing plenty, like cutting taxes!)
Round three saw questions on household debt and credit card regulations, unfair taxation to certain fishers taking licence retirements, more questions on Hank Tepper languishing in a Lebanese prison, asbestos, a Canadian kidnapped in Afghanistan, visitor visa requirements, and another crumbling bridge in Quebec.
Sartorially speaking, there was just so much bad style once again that I can’t bring myself to really deliver any snaps, but will give a number of citations for things like bad khaki suits with bright shirts or ties (John Williamson, Jonathan Tremblay, and Denis Blanchette being egregious offenders), misuse of fluorescent green (Matthew Dubé, Chris Charlton), and the perpetual offence of yellow and black (Dany Morin, Olivia Chow, Alexandre Boulerice).
Overall, my bit of constructive criticism of the day would be for clusters of MPs asking questions on the same theme to stop repeating the same preamble with each iteration. Such as all three G20 mass-arrest questions starting out with “The G20 was a year ago…” We get it. Once was enough, but not every single time. If you’re going to use this tactic of spreading themed questions out across MPs in such a manner that you’re not actually addressing what the Minister said in a follow-up capacity, you don’t need to start over from scratch again. It drags it down, and makes it look all the more amateurish (especially since most tend to be reading off of their sheets rather robotically while they’re at it).