Just after noon on Friday, Paul Calandra, the Prime Minister’s parliamentary secretary, stood and tearfully apologized for his irrelevant responses of earlier in the week. Just after noon today, Peter Van Loan, the Government House leader, stood and argued, essentially, that Mr. Calandra should be free (at least beyond his own conscience) to be so irrelevant again.
Rising to respond to the NDP’s motion that would impose some standard of relevancy on responses offered by the government in Question Period, Mr. Van Loan first used nearly 600 words to expound on what he saw as relative greatness of the Canadian parliamentary system. Perhaps this was Mr. Van Loan’s way of trying to cheer everyone up.
