I faintly remember a time where I had a bit of optimism about Question Period. After a decade of the exercise being continually debased with a collection of non-sequitur talking points being read off of sheets of paper, a new government that talked about respecting Parliament had taken charge, and most of the ministers in the new Cabinet appeared to be making an effort to look like they weren't reading. Sure, some of them were a bit formulaic, but that wasn't wholly unexpected. We had a PM who appeared to be making an effort to show up and answer questions, and we had opposition leaders who seemed to want to set a more respectful tone in the way they asked questions. It was a refreshing change.
By the end of 2017, there is a definite sense that things are on the decline once again, possibly to the point of plumbing new depths. I'm not talking about decorum that's one thing that has improved significantly since the last parliament, and between the Liberals' clapping ban, and a Speaker who is making a great effort to name and shame repeat offenders so much so that he actually had one MP removed from the Chamber for refusing to pipe down, for the first time in longer that I've been in the Press Gallery we no longer have a QP that is dominated by jeering, hooting baboons. So, small victories.
No, things took a turn for the worse when we got a change in leadership in the opposition ranks. Thomas Mulcair, when he got demoted to "interim" leader for the better part of a year-and-a-half, went from someone with a (somewhat overblown) reputation for prosecutorial eloquence to someone whose bitter sarcasm and vitriol left a bad taste in everyone's mouths. His replacement has refused to seek a seat, and that leaves another placeholder in his stead who makes a good effort, but for whom we cannot take as seriously as someone who will be taking that fight into the next election.
For the Conservatives, however, things have backslid to a shambolic mess that is painful to watch. Under Rona Ambrose, there was a fair share of overwrought questions and hyperbolic rhetoric, but there was a range of questions every day, and there was an actual attempt to look like there was an exercise in accountability going on. Scheer has backed away from that entirely. The questions are no longer overwrought they are disingenuous to the point of being mendacious. Facts have been so distorted that they treat everyone watching like idiots, because even the most cursory fact-checking will show that the resemblance to reality is barely even tenuous. Most of the time, the connections they try to draw with their questions make conspiracy theories look better researched. And then there is the attempt to be provocateurs, with ill-considered moves like trying to put Rachael Harder into chair of the Status of Women committee and then complaining that the Liberals are sexist for opposing the choice, while trying to both fan the flames of the weaponization of free speech on campus at the same time as backing away from the alt-right's mouthpieces in Canada. Scheer's trying to brand himself as a Dollarama knock-off Anne Coulter that doesn't quite fit with the "positive politics" he professed during his leadership bid, but that's not the worst part.
What Scheer has done to debase QP more than anything is his tactic of trying to make repetition his tool of choice. We have to sit through the same question over, and over, and over, and over. And over. Each repetition gets more hysterical than the previous one. Apparently, this is Scheer's version of playing the long game, trying to "build a narrative" through constant repetition of the same dishonest portrayal of the facts that puts into practice the line that if you repeat a lie often enough it starts to sound like the truth. Any attempt to get any accountability in QP anymore is gone. Now it's all about trying to get clips of Trudeau not answering the questions put to him with the full knowledge that these questions are either unanswerable or are traps designed to be used against him and most of the actual issues of the day of real consequence aren't being asked at all. We've gone through two Auditor General's reports now where the subject matter was barely touched in QP. And somehow this is supposed to be an exercise in holding government to account.
As for the government? The attempt to answer questions has been curtailed with a sense of risk aversion that has morphed into an instinct to respond to every and all questions with a heap of pabulum. They don't even start to engage on the issues, or fight back against the false narratives being put around them, until it's far too late. Whether it's with Harjit Sajjan's "architect" boast, the filibusters in the spring about proposed parliamentary reforms, the CCPC tax changes this summer, or Bill Morneau's conflict disclosures over the fall, the government doesn't fight back until it's too late. And those talking points are even more repetitive than the questions being asked, so when they do finally respond the way they should have on day one, those of us listening are already at the point of being willing to gnaw off a limb to get out of the bear trap that we find ourselves in, observing it without tuning out.
This isn't the way that things are supposed to happen. Wooden exchanges of scripted questions and answers that made life so intolerable between 2011 and 2015 were bad enough, but monotonous mendacity versus pabulum is making this an exercise in tedium. I long for the days when Bob Rae was the able to extemporaneously stand up and give some real accountability, with wit and wry humour. That's not something I'm sure that Andrew Scheer is capable of, and it's more the pity.
