OTTAWA — The use of slogans during question period got under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s skin on Wednesday.
During a raucus question period that saw Speaker Greg Fergus rise a number of times to scold MPs for jeering and shouting out-of-turn, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bristled after Poilievre employed a little branded wordplay in his questions.
“After nine years of this costly NDP carbon tax coalition, what’s happened? What’s up?” Poilievre said.
“Taxes up, costs up, crime’s up, time’s up.”
A plainly-peeved prime minister accused Poilieve of practising performative politics.
“That little performance shows just how much the leader of the Opposition loves his slogans, but actually doesn’t put forward any,” Trudeau began, before being drowned out by jeers from Opposition MPs.
“Boy Mr. Speaker, you point out the performance of the leader of the Opposition and his colleagues get all upset, because they know that he doesn’t actually care about Canadians. He doesn’t care about the programs we’re delivering, he doesn’t care about stepping up to support Canadians — he’s in a bad mood because inflation has come down to 2% Mr. Speaker, and it ruins his little ‘Justinflation’ slogan.”
On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland ducked questions about Monday’s byelection losses by taking credit for the Bank of Canada’s recent decision to lower interest rates.
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Later on in the session, NDP Caucus Chair Alistair MacGregor again triggered Trudeau by challenging the Liberals on their failures on health care and grocery prices.
“Canadians are fed up, they’re working harder and falling further behind,” MacGregor said.
“Why doesn’t this prime minister keep caving to CEOs while Canadians pay the price.”
Clearly sensing a slogan lurking amongst MacGregor’s words, Trudeau took to his feet.
“Unfortunately the NDP is taking a page out of the Conservative playbook and choosing slogans rather than the hard work that’ll actually help Canadians,” the PM said, insisting his government is indeed holding grocery CEOs to account, and made mention of the Liberal’s school lunch program.
“Those are the things tangibly that we’re busy delivering, while they’re playing politics.”
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