Now that the censuses is that the Conservatives have had a successful convention they came out unified and firing on all cylinders in the House of Commons yesterday. At least that is how John Ivison presents it in his column today.
...It was not a good day for the Liberals. An energized Conservative party, fresh from its successful convention, gave a strong team performance that humbled the grey collection of has-beens and never-weres that occupy much of the government's front bench.
If it had been a hockey game, the score would have been about 10-nothing and the Liberals would have been lucky to get nothing.
...Ablonczy was merely nursing her wrath to keep it warm and when Brison retired spent, she unleashed a salvo that brought the whole Tory caucus to its feet. "Testimony since the election has revealed a trail of taxpayer money that leads directly to the Liberal party. No one believes the Prime Minister, at the time finance minister, vice-chair of the Treasury Board, and political minister for Quebec, could have had no clue that this was going on. If he did not, he is too dim to be Prime Minister."
I watched the repeat last night on CPAC and the exchange between MP Ablonczy and Minister Brison was great theatre. The best thing about this was that Minister Brison chastised MP Ablonczy for using the word theft and said that she would not do so outside of Question Period when she no longer had immunity. What did she do? She went out in the hall and said (quoting from memory) after the Liberals have done all of these things, what else do you call it other than theft. If such immunity is not applicable in the hallways then good for you MP Ablonczy.
...Much has been written about the Conservatives' slim prospects of picking up any seats in Quebec at the next election but if the government has too many days in the House like yesterday they won't need to. Quebecers will simply stampede to the Bloc in their thousands, invoking a plague on the houses of both main national parties.
I guess MP Peter MacKay was correct when he said the free pass is over.
