While the prime minister was in town today, he was not in QP, though his deputy was on the day that “debate” began on the budget implementation bill. Most of the other leaders were present, and Pierre Poilievre led off in French, he worried about the cost of housing in Quebec, and lurid tales of certain people in media who have lost their homes. Sean Fraser got up to praise their agreement with Quebec to build more affordable housing. Poilievre dismissed this as “more expensive processes,” and took a shot at the Bloc for agreeing to government spending, and falsely blaming that on inflation. C ..read more

The weekend discourse appears to have been much of what last week’s was, which was the Conservatives lying about the state of the opioid crisis in BC, lying about Justin Trudeau’s culpability, and lying about…well, pretty much everything. I feel like I need to keep saying this, but the decriminalisation project in BC is not what caused people to start using drugs openly in public places. That is happening everywhere. It is happening right now on the streets in Ottawa, where there is no decriminalisation, because there is currently a prevailing ethos that if you use in public places and overdos ..read more

On a very busy Friday, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue released the first report of the foreign interference public inquiry, to some moderate fanfare. Much of it was broadly what was in the Johnston report, but with some more nuance, which left some of it open to degrees of interpretation, some partisans claiming it proves there was meddling, others leaning on the parts where she said that what there was wasn’t enough to amount to changing an election outcome, and there certainly wasn’t some grand effort by China to win the election for the Liberals. At most, it might have cost Kenny Chiu his seat ..read more

Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem appeared before the Commons’ finance committee yesterday, and reiterated that a decision on a rate cut is getting close, which should be good news to (most) everyone—most especially the government. There were a couple of other interesting things he said, which is that we’re not beholden to matching the US’ rate, but at the same time, we can’t diverge too much, or we would face currency devaluation. There is a limit to how much Canadian interest-rate policy can diverge from the Federal Reserve, Bank of Canada Gov. Tiff Macklem said Thursday, as traders pond ..read more

The prime minister was in town today but not in QP, though his deputy was. Most of the other leaders were also away, leaving Andrew Scheer to lead off, where he asked for the date at which the prime minister would like make it illegal to smoke crack in a hospital room. Chrystia Freeland said that BC approached the federal government with a pilot project, the government shares their concerns, and they are working then to adapt the programme, but MPs shouldn’t score political points off of this tragedy. Scheer tried a second time, and Freeland gave a paean to working together to solve these prob ..read more

Not unexpectedly, a number of MPs have renewed the call to oust Greg Fergus from the Speaker’s chair after Tuesday’s dramatics during Question Period. For the Bloc, who soured on Fergus shortly after his election and his recording a video in his robes, they’re complaining that he can’t control the room, which is a bit unfair because MPs themselves have hobbled the Speaker’s ability to enforce decorum by giving him narrow powers in the Standing Orders. This logic also ignores the culpability of those who are making the noise—the Speaker isn’t making them behave like that. And for the record, Fe ..read more

After all of yesterday’s drama, it was a real question as to what was going to go down today, with the prime minister present, and there to respond to (but not necessarily answer) all questions. His deputy was absent, but all other leaders were present. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, worrying about the public health director suggesting decriminalisation in Montreal and Quebec, and demanded the government deny the request. Justin Trudeau said that they should take a moment to reflect on what happened yesterday, and said that the government takes the tragedy in BC seriously and they work wi ..read more

It took only minutes from Pierre Poilievre’s ouster from the House of Commons during Question Period yesterday for the first boo-hoo fundraising email to be sent out to party donors, falsely claiming the reason why he was ejected as being “censorship” (it was because he did not respect the authority of the Speaker and refused to withdraw a remark when given four opportunities to do so), but it’s not like the truth has ever stopped Poilievre in the past. A few more minutes later, every Conservative MP started putting out tweets also giving a false version of what happened, and they used the wor ..read more

Tuesday, and both the prime minister and his deputy were present, which is a nice change. All of the other leaders were present as well, and Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and blamed the federal government’s “radical drug policies” (which aren’t federal) for tripling overdose deaths and claimed Bloc support, and cited newspaper reports about safe consumption sites near schools in Montreal. Trudeau insisted that they need solutions grounded in compassion, healthcare and science to fix the problem. Poilievre switched to English to repeat that the “radical” drug policy has resulted in even m ..read more

I saw a post yesterday that took a page from Hansard on that day in 1978, and well, it was full of the first prime minister Trudeau and several honourable members accusing one another of being animals, or parts thereof. And while hilarious, I think it’s a bit of a corrective when people keep insisting that Parliament used to be a much more genteel place (and we got a lot of that during the Ed Broadbent and Brian Mulroney memorials). Remember when Parliament was a much more genteel place? https://t.co/QjCTSKVKvu — Dale Smith (@journo_dale) April 29, 2024 It really wasn’t that genteel. It neve ..read more