The PM was in the building but not present, while Pierre Poilievre was in Calgary. After some tearful statements about Wainwright, it was Michael Barrett who led off, and he lamented that the CRA went with an American-linked security firm instead of the Canadian Commissionaires for a contract (ignoring that the Commissionaires are no longer a company that primarily hires veterans). Wayne Long reminded him that politicians are not involved with such decisions and the CRA operates independently, and that the CRA has a policy of prioritising Canadian procurement, and that this was a Canadian-owned firm. Barrett repeated the question, and got the same response. Melissa Lantsman took over and raised the PBO’s latest report and its dire warnings, and demanded the government rein in spending. François-Philippe Champagne replied with the “good news” of our growth figures and the fact that we have the lowest debt and deficit in the G7. Lantsman disputed this, and Champagne carried on with more good news, decrying the Conservatives talking down the economy. Luc Berthold took over to read the same script about the PBO en français, and Champagne listed some benefits available to Canadians. Berthold retorted that every new benefit means more Canadians at food banks (erm, correlation ≠ causation, my dude), and Champagne decried that the Conservatives only vote against supports for Canadians.
Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he denounced Bill C-39 as an abuse of power, and Steven MacKinnon took the opportunity to thank Albertans for voting in favour of Canada, and then mouthed some platitudes about the bill. Blanchet listed ways that C-39 could be an attack on Quebec or national unity, and MacKinnon shrugged this off. Gabriel Ste-Marie listed the former employers of the Energy Regulator—all former oil executives, but Dominic LeBlanc gave him some bland assurances about valuing science and it only applying to federal bodies.
Round two, and Michelle Rempel Garner blamed immigrants for youth not getting jobs (Diab: Numbers are way down under us; Hajdu: We restrict temporary foreign workers), Brad Redekopp tried this again (Hajdu: Here are requests from your members for more temporary foreign workers; Your members keep coming to committee to advocate for these private colleges), Costas Menegakis blamed the Liberals for rising anti-immigration sentiment (Anandasangaree: We removed tens of thousands of ineligible migrants), and Jason Groleau claimed the Liberals were punishing law-abiding immigrants instead of removing non-citizen criminals (Hajdu: You’re both against immigration and say you need more immigrants; Canadians always come first for labour).
The Conservatives are doubling down on gutter racism with anti-immigration questions. Diab responds by patting herself on the back for how far numbers have declined. #QP
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-20T18:34:03.425Z
Martin Champoux denounced that the government killed the digital services tax and has not dispersed the promised $600 million for the media sector (Miller: That funding will be coming).
John Brassard returned to the CRA contract question, with added sanctimony (Long: Politicians are not involved in these decisions and it’s a Canadian company; It was an independent process), Fraser Tolmie tried again with added hyperbole (Long: Same answer), Pierre Paul-Hus tried again en français (Long: The CRA prioritises hiring veterans and it was an independent process; This was an objective process).
The budget will be delivered on November 5th. #QP
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-20T18:50:07.399Z
Round three saw questions on workforce participation (Zerucelli: We have created 160,000 jobs this year; Hajdu: Hooray for our jobs programmes; Belanger: Saskatchewan saw job growth thanks to us; Joly: You guys never mention the trade war or the effect on jobs; Guay: you seem to have missed the Churchill Falls announcement, or the Montreal Port project), the PBO report on the trade war impacts (MacKinnon: Canada had a great day yesterday and we need to thank Albertans; LeBlanc: The PM is doing his job of building a strong Canadian economy), dairy goats impacted by tariffs (Joly: We are providing supports), deficits (Chartrand: You guys keep voting against Manitobans; Champagne: We have the strongest fiscal position in the G7; Church: Hooray for the Canada Child Benefit; trolling for support for a tough-on-crime private member’s bill (Sahota: We look forward to collaborating), Bill C-39 trampling rights and only getting eight hours of witnesses at committee (MacKinnon: We already engaged in a long line of consultations for this bill), and pest control regulations (Michel: Health and safety will remain our top priority while we support our agriculture sector).
Overall, we got a couple of hints of what is coming today as the Conservatives spent most of the second round on frankly racist anti-immigration questions, emboldened by the fact that five of the noxious nine questions as part of the Alberta referendum that related to immigration all passed (so far as we can tell, with counts still happening). This is not good. Also not good is the fact that the gods damned immigration minister responded by patting herself on the back for bringing levels down, which de facto concedes the point to these frankly racist questions. I simply cannot understand why nobody in the government gets this very basic point. I know that they are fine with scapegoating Justin Trudeau for the supposed “out of control” numbers, which they never actually were, and it also ignores the culpability of premiers with what happened with student visas, but for the love of all the gods on Olympus, stop conceding these racist talking points. You are only making it worse.
Meanwhile, the government set up the day to have their backbench suck-up questions be used in order to announce the budget date, first in English and then in French so that they could get clips for either. It’s a partiuclar practice that is just bad form, and abuses Question Period when they have statements by ministers as part of the routine proceedings in the day, and this is certainly something that should be done using that mechanism, not QP as these are not actually questions to the government, merely a sham to make an announcement.
Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to John-Paul Danko for a dark grey suit with a crisp white short width a darker grey tie and a lighter grey pocket square, and to Arielle Kayabaga for a dark grey suit with a high-collared white top. Style citations go out to Rechie Valdez for. White dress with a button collar and pastel florals across it, and to Jason Groleau for a black suit black short and black tie. Dishonourable mention goes out to Linda Lapointe for a green-tinged yellow jacket over a black dress, and to Iqra Khalid for a bright yellow long jacket over a black top.