The first day back after the winter break, and unusual, the PM was no present, and was instead making a trip to Toronto to go soothe Doug Ford’s wounded feelings after the EV agreement with China. Pierre Poilievre was present, and he led off in French with some misleading and poorly thought-out concern about food price inflation, claiming it couldn’t be external factors before demanding an end to “inflationary deficits.” François-Philippe Champagne stood up to loudly proclaim their new GST credit for Canadians. Poilievre claimed this new rebate wouldn’t pay for a single grocery shop, and again demanded and end to supposed “inflationary deficits.” This time Steven MacKinnon wished him well in advance of his leadership review before praising their bill, C-15 and called for the Conservatives to support it. Poilievre repeated his first question in English, and MacKinnon repeated his same response in English. Poilievre again raised the so-called “hidden taxes,” and Champagne repeated his praise for the GST rebate. Poilievre tried again, and Patty Hajdu essentially dared the Conservatives to vote against these supports. Poilievre insisted this was all the cause of “hidden taxes,” but said he would let the rebate pass. Champagne again got up and took Poilievre at his word in his letter about fast-tracking measures to help Canadians.
“Where are you running next time?” A Liberal backbencher heckles. #QP
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-26T19:22:05.773Z
Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she denounced the version of history that Carney recounted in his speech in Quebec City. MacKinnon praised the fact that anglophones and Francophones built the country. Normandin listed more attacks against Francophones in history, and MacKinnon pointed to his own family history to praise the “mutual respect” and cooperation between linguistic communities. Normandin reminded them of the burning of the pre-Confederation Parliament rather than compensating French Canadian farmers, and Champagne tried to change the topic back to their GST rebate.
Round two, and Andrew Scheer got up to denounce the so-called “hidden taxes” (Long: Stop the obstruction; Hogan: You’re just recycling the 2015 playbook), Jasraj Hallan read more misleading nonsense about food prices (MacDonald: Our measures will help the agricultural sector; Solomon: Say yes to supporting families), Michael Barrett demanded support for Poilievre’s nonsense bill (MacKinnon: You should support our budget implementation bill), Pierre Paul-Hus demanded that support in French (Provost: Hooray for our rebate; Gull-Masty: Work with us).
Martin Champoux returned to the grousing about the revisionist history of Francophones (Miller: The message was a national one, but did you ask permission from the PQ leader to ask these questions?; MacKinnon: Quebeckers have been telling us to focus on affordability, which is what we are doing).
Carol Anstey returned to the “hidden taxes” on food (Thompson: Here is what people in our province will get from that rebate), Connie Cody read the same script (Bendayan: This is real money to help families), and Jacques Gourde read the same script in loud French (Champagne: You are behind because now we have our GST rebate; Gull-Masty: We are here to help Canadians with all kinds of costs).
Round three saw yet more questions on food prices (Michel: We put in this measure to help them eat well; Gainey: Hooray for the rebate; van Koeverden: You should focus on getting this measure passed; Zerucelli: We are delivering for Canadians; Belanger: Hooray for the rebate), being tough on crime (Anandasangaree: Hooray to the RCMP for the arrest of Ryan Wedding, and we have six public safety bills that you are obstructing; Fraser: There has been a reduction in crime in this country, and you haven’t done your research; Sahota: Pass lawful access), softwood tariffs (Hogan: We have announced new supports and have a task force for the future of the industry; Your comments are out of touch; MacKinnon: We are going to put those people to work in this country), Doug Ford’s threats to Crown Royal—which is not a question for this House (LeBlanc: We eliminated federal trade barriers, and the prime minister is meeting with premiers this week), and demanding the rebate immediately and not months from now (Olszewski: Hooray for the rebate).
It would be great if the Conservatives actually read the StatsCan report on food prices. Hint: It has fuck all to do with the industrial carbon price.It would be even better if the government could point this out instead of just getting clips announcing their GST rebate. #QP
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-26T20:00:58.981Z
Overall, the absolute worst instincts for pretty much every party was out in full force today, and it was absolutely repetitive all the way through. The Conservatives once again demanded action on grocery prices, but kept insisting that the announced enhanced GST rebate is just a “band-aid solution” that won’t fix those prices. But at the same time, they didn’t actually read the StatsCan report on food price inflation beyond just the headline figures, because they keep reading scripts about the so-called “hidden taxes” that don’t actually impact food prices, and lo, even if we got rid of the industrial carbon price, it would’t lower food prices, just like ending the consumer carbon levy didn’t change prices. They refuse to learn. However. The government didn’t help themselves either, because all they did was put up a string of ministers and parliamentary secretaries to proclaim that rebate, and absolutely nobody pushed back against any one of the Conservatives’ disinformation lines about those food prices. Each side was just getting clips for their socials, and it’s so tiresome.
Otherwise, the Bloc spent all of their questions to decry the “revisionist history” from Carney’s speech last Thursday, and listing the various historic grievances that Quebeckers have from Canadian history, and again, the government could have actually tried to work with this list of grievances to turn this into something constructive whether it’s to praise the resilience of Quebeckers and the ability to move past these harms into a better future, but they didn’t, and it just feels like they keep squandering every single opportunity to turn the attacks around. This shouldn’t be rocket science, and yet here we are.
Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Shannon Stubbs for a taupe sweater with brown slacks, and to François-Philippe Champagne for a navy suit with a light blue shirt and a dark purple tie. Style citations go out to Scott Anderson for a medium-grey suit, maroon shirt, and a grey and beige striped tie, and to Ginette Lavack for a pale green Eighties-esque wide-necked sweater.