Despite being in town and on a Wednesday, the PM was not present for what could very well have been the final QP of 2025. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he accused Mark Wiseman, potential candidate for the new ambassador to Washington, of advocating throwing open the borders to cause the decline of housing, healthcare, and French in Canada, as part of the Century Initiative, and accused the government of planning to reward him. Steve MacKinnon said that he first wanted to wish the best to Ambassador Kirsten Hillman, but the Century Initiative has never been and will never be the government’s policy. Poilievre said that regardless, the person behind the policy was Wiseman, saying he showed contempt for Quebec and cannot negotiate on their behalf. Dominic LeBlanc gave his own thanks to Hillman, and said that Poilievre was trying to get a clip for the news but this wasn’t going to be the one. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the “radical open doors” accusation about Wiseman. MacKinnon repeated praise for Hillman, and that the Century Initiative was never government policy. Poilievre segued this to taking swipes at the PM for the trip to Egypt and the costs of the private plane, where he played no role at the ceremony. MacKinnon pretended to be aghast that Poilievre was suggesting the PM miss an auspicious event as signing a peace accord for Gaza. Poilievre continued to be agog at the cost of said flight, and this time Anita Anand praised the prime minister’s role in global events. Poilievre groused that Carney himself wasn’t answering, and then pivoted to his imaginary “hidden taxes.” Patty Hajdu dismissed these imaginary taxes and pointed to drought and climate change hurting crops and herds, which was why the governor was ensuring they have money in their pockets.

Christine Normandin rose for the Bloc, and she too complained about Wiseman and the Century Initiative. MacKinnon reminded her that was never the policy of the government and never would be. Normandin suggested one of the Liberal Quebec MPs stand up the prime minister to push back against his appointment. This time Joël Lightbound reiterated that this was not their policy, before taking a swipe at the Bloc for not caring about culture in Quebec. Yves Perron raised the “sandboxing” provisions in the budget and called them anti-democratic, to which MacKinnon dismissed the concern as they were debating it right now.

Round two, and Andrew Scheer concern trolled that the Liberals voted against the MOU motion (Hogan: We support the pipeline and the whole MOU which is a careful balancing; McLean: When I was in the Notley government, we partnered with the Liberals to build a pipeline to tidewater), Melissa Lantsman took her own swipe at the cost of the Egypt flight (MacKinnon: You have had a lot to say about this conflict he was attending an event with his global counterparts) and imaginary taxes (Hajdu: You want to stand in the way of help for Canadians), Leslyn Lewis gave the imaginary taxes script (Gainey: Once again you are focused on imaginary taxes while we give supports; We have been creating jobs), Grant Jackson gave the same script (Chartrand: Manitobans are happy with what our government is doing).

Hogan: Being elected in Battle River does not an Albertan make. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-12-10T19:35:56.882Z

Xavier Barsalou-Duval worried about temporary immigrants in the trucking industry (MacKinnon: The Quebec Truckers Association appreciates our measures; We have done a whole litany of measures).

Gérard Deltell returned to the Wiseman/Century Initiative script, but in French (LeBlanc: You are just repeating your leader’s script to get a clip, but that was never government policy; We will no be negotiating Supply Management with the Americans), Larry Brock complained about the justice committee schedule (Fraser: We have watched your colleagues filibuster the committee for weeks; The speed by which Conservatives will cite heinous crimes but then block legislation is shameless; MacKinnon: Just because you wrote Poilievre’s biography, he knows the tricks to the trade to obstruct work in this place).

Round three saw questions on food insecurity (McKnight: You are too comfortable with fictions and fantasies; McLean: You are all Scrooges who don’t want to help children and families; Zerucelli: We are focused on creating opportunities, and jobs and wages are up; Olszewski: The industrial carbon price has next to zero impact on food but they vote against tangible measures like school food; Hogan: Albertans know that imaginary taxes are imaginary; Provost: We are restoring Canadians’ purchasing power; Lightbound: You keep asking the same thing every day, but the Canada Child Benefit is not imaginary; Bendayan: These are crocodile tears because you vote against support), the Stellantis contract (Joly: We are standing by auto workers, and we will go after Stellantis for breaking their contract; When Harper signed agreements two plants closed; Belanger: Sending useless Conservative MPs from Saskatchewan to Ottawa was a poor investment), gun control in PEI (Anandasangaree: We will move ahead with the compensation programme), and climate change (Dabrusin: Our government is committed to the fight against climate change).

Overall, if this was the last QP of the year, it was more of a whimper than a bang. Trying to relitigate the Century Initiative, with added scapegoat of immigrants, was a pretty pathetic attempt to divert attention from the crushing failure of the Conservatives’ Supply Day motion yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the Bloc also wanted to make hay about this, giving a false attribution to something Wiseman tweeted when he in fact just tweeted an Andrew Coyne column whose headline the objected to. It was a sad spectacle, but that’s pretty much all we can expect from this Parliament. Even sadder was Andrew Lawton’s pathetic intervention during Points of Order afterward about whether parliamentary privilege protected MPs from prosecution for religious expression, which is most wretched attempt at trolling for social media clips.

Otherwise, things were pretty much a rehash of the scripts from the past couple of weeks, imaginary “hidden taxes” most especially. The government’s responses were middling, and it being the season, we got responses references “grinches” and “Scrooges,” and wishing the opposition be voted by the ghosts of Xmas past, present and future. Time to send the MPs home, because things are pretty much scraping the bottom.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Linda Lapointe for a white jacket over a black dress, and to Burton Bailey for a dark grey three-piece suit with a crisp white shirt and a dark blue tie. Style citations go out to Grant Jackson for a burgundy jacket, white shirt, light blue tie and dark blue jeans, and to Lianne Rood for a green top with long sequinned sleeves with black slacks.