Scrums: Mischaracterization

Question period Tuesday was almost over when New Democrat MP Anne Minh-Thu Quach stood up with a question for Environment Minister Peter Kent about something he said Monday in committee. He was reportedly unable to specify how much his department is spending on reducing greenhouse gasses in different sectors.

“The precise number is far less important than our government’s decision that we would not be sending billions of hard earned Canadian dollars abroad to buy hot air credits from depressed eastern European economies,” Kent said, and promised a bit later that his department would get back to the committee with some figures.

Minh-Thu Quach told the House Tuesday afternoon that, according to her, “either the minister has no idea of the costs of his politics, or he wants to hide them.”

“Because I’m nice,” she said, she would give him a second chance to say how much the government’s approach would cost taxpayers.

At the other end of the Commons, Kent stood up to reply.

“That is a slight mischaracterization of our exchange yesterday in committee,” he said.

•••

A few minutes earlier, NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice had reprimanded the government over allegations the Conservative party placed calls to voters during the 2011 election in an attempt to commit voter fraud.

As has become customary, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre got the call to respond to Boulerice, and repeated (as is also customary) the defence that the Conservatives are working with Elections Canada with regards to whatever the situation might have been in the riding of Guelph, where attention on the robocall story has been focused for most of the year.

Boulerice described the reply he got as “interesting” and commented that Poilievre’s answer was comparable to the lines Conservative Maxime Bernier delivered on CTV last week, referring to how Bernier was shown to have been coached his lines prior to an appearance on Power Play. In that clip, a Conservative staffer could be seen reciting talking points to Bernier about another mischaractarization: that NDP MP Olivia Chow had proposed in committee that there ought to be a “penny tax” – something the Conservatives railed against Monday as being a “risky plan”.

Bernier, Poilievre defended Tuesday, was “simply quoting from a proposal put forward by the NDP in the transportation committee,” which, he said, “proposes a new value added sales tax.”

This, of course, is a massive half-truth. At best. Chow did indeed put forth a proposal that she said the committee ought to consider, but not as something she endorsed. Conservative Ed Holder asked Chow at the time how his city (London) could “collect that tax you’re proposing.”

Chow replied:

    “The Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the big city mayors came up with the one-cent GST proposal. If you want me to go and find details of how that one-cent GST works, I could do so. This is not a new idea. It is something that has been proposed by the municipalities and the big city mayors. They ran a big campaign on it. Is that a good idea? I don’t know. I think it’s useful to take a look at what had been proposed in the past and what other countries have done.”

•••

As Kent sat down after his first answer, NDP MP Megan Leslie stood up across the way.

“Mischaracterization?” she asked of Kent’s defence. “Well, we have the transcripts.”

She again asked Kent for the costs of reducing greenhouse gasses.

“Obviously my colleague was not listening to my previous question and was not in attendance at the committee meeting yesterday,” Kent fumbled. “The first two sectors have been regulated. The cost benefits are available. A total number cannot be given until we regulate all of the other sectors in our sector by sector plan.”

Then Kent added, “the number Canadians are interested in is the proposed $21 billion carbon tax the NDP would pick out of the pockets of hard-working Canadian taxpayers.”

And the world folded in on itself.

Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Colin Horgan