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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   29676 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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I don’t know much about Canadian politics but as an outsider, I think I came to that realization with that viral video clip of the two MPs going at it a while back.

One, a conservative, asked a very simple question; “How much does the average house in the Ottowa area cost?”.

The other, a liberal I assume, simply replied with a random accomplishment of the liberal government, completely ignoring the line of questioning.

The conservative asked the same question, and the liberal breathlessly did it again, just blurting out some non-sequitor factoid about the supposed accomplishments of the liberal government.

This went on and on for maybe like ten minutes straight, like literally 25 times.

It was so incredibly baldly dishonest I almost admired it.

Edit: Found it.

Question period has long been a joke. That's not new.

I saw this and wondered how common it was.

It’s… good to know that’s normal? I guess?

I don't think it's usually that blatant, but it is common for the government not to answer the question and to make some loosely related rhetorical point instead. They have to respond to the questions, but the Speaker never forces them to actually answer them like a judge would in a courtroom.

The Westminster system encourages this with question time. It’s kind of like a mandatory humiliation ritual for the government.

Some Anglophile Americans (John McCain was one) have advocated a ‘President’s Question Time’ where the president and other cabinet officials would answer questions from congressmen once a week. But you don’t even need to look north or across the Atlantic to see what a shit show it would become; congressional hearings (eg the recent Harvard/Penn ones) are evidence enough.

To be fair, it called "Question Period" for a reason -- nobody ever said there would be answers...

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