With news of a second Conservative cabinet minister having an airport meltdown – this time Minister of Veterans Affairs Jean-Pierre Blackburn, over not wanting to turn over a bottle of tequila – the Opposition is already having a field day. During Friday’s Question Period, the Bloc already dubbed him as the “Minister for Tequila.”

But then I saw this story – that CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes is apparently on the bubble and may face cancellation. Which is a huge shame. If 22 Minutes goes, we won’t have any political satire left on English television in this country. And an incident like the Minister of Tequila is ripe for 22 Minutes to take on.

Just this last week, 22 Minutes took on Helena Guergis’ meltdown, and perpetual outrage machine John Baird. They gave a spookily accurate take on backbenchers in the House.

And who can forget openly gay cast member Gavin Crawford taking on Michael Ignatieff?

That question of whether the Conservatives made a breach of privilege by refusing to turn over the Afghan detainee documents finally reared its head in the House yesterday – first from Liberal Derek Lee, then the NDP’s Jack Harris, followed by the Bloc’s Claude Bachand. The Conservatives tried to make a specious defence, citing a precedent that was completely and utterly unrelated, probably hoping the bafflegab would provide an adequate shield. I’m not so sure. The Speaker isn’t expected to rule until sometime next week, so stay tuned.

Ralph Goodale started off Question Period on the issue of the 10 percenters, saying there was no way one could “paint a moustache on that pig and call it Brad Pitt.” Now there’s a sexy image. Would the Conservatives stop them? Harper said sure, they’d stop if the Liberals would – but they’d also want the “direct subsidy to political parties” stopped.

Goodale moved onto questions of First Nations University, to which Harper replied they would no longer fund it, but they'd still be “taking care of” the students. On the supplemental, Chuck Strahl said what he “understood” from the question was that the Liberals wanted to get rid of the subsidy to parties to pay for other programs. Seriously? That’s not even clever.

Bob Rae asked after the whole “maternal and child health” issue, and out of the blue, Bev Oda volunteered that they’ve been clear in saying the whole time they haven’t “closed the door” on contraception, but they weren’t going to open the abortion debate. She’s been saying it the whole time! Really – check Hansard! In other news, the chocolate ration has been doubled from four grams to two! Doubleplusgood!

It didn’t help that we were getting criticism for our socially conservative position on contraception and safe abortion. Or that our G8 partners were well ahead of us on the issue. Or that we actually signed onto an agreement about family planning two years ago.

Gilles Duceppe was back on about HST negotiations with Quebec. Jack Layton asked after the moral will of the House on the prorogation vote. Harper invoked coalition panic instead. Layton turned to the contraception issue, but Harper was asking him about 10 percenters. Huh? Mark Holland asked why they were so quick to pass judgment on other provincial sentences, but not Rahim Jaffer’s. Nicholson retorted with a not-unexpected “you’re soft on crime” dodge.

Sartorially, it was a pretty dull day, but it didn’t help that there were a lot of empty seats. I did like Judy Wasylycia-Leis’ black jacket over a white top, with a cool, chunky red necklace. I was not, however, a fan of James Moore’s awful tan-and-beige striped tie. Awful! And he still needs to take his jackets to a tailor.

In the event that there hadn’t been enough spin for the day, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews went on Power & Politics and asserted that they won’t be building any new prisons – despite there being memos from the head of Corrections Canada that say otherwise. And to handle that massive increase in the prison population that will result from their wrong-headed “tough on crime” bills? Well, they’ll just resort to double-bunking the prisoners, and that’ll be fine. Because it’s not like we have to respect their rights or anything, because that would mean we’re coddling criminals and paying more attention to their rights over the rights of the victims. Oh, and never mind that the Correctional Investigator has pointed out they’re already over-capacity, and are double-bunking and triple-bunking in places. But hey, Vic Toews says no new prisons, and they can handle the increase in population. I think Jason Kenney isn’t the only one with a “complicated relationship” with the truth on that front bench.

The number two Mountie says the gun registry is helpful and necessary. Something else Vic Toews doesn’t want to hear.

The NDP are calling out a Conservative MP on the special Afghanistan committee for his reinterpretation of the Geneva conventions.

Up today – Michael Ignatieff is off to Vancouver and Burnaby while he continues his tour of the country in the lead-up to his big conference next week.

PS – I don’t normally do much foreign news, but this story about a former US general accusing the Dutch of failing at Srebrenica because they had gay soldiers was too ridiculous not to mention.

I caught up with Scott Brison about some of the issues that have been on his plate of late.

Q: The citizenship guide issue – you’re taken the lead on that. It’s been a few days now and we’ve heard all manner of excuses from Kenney on that, so what’s your read of the situation?
A: This is a minister who has claimed no involvement. We know that the public servants fought relentlessly to keep the equality in the guide, and the Minister’s office claims that neither he nor his office had anything to do with its removal. That leaves us with only one other alternative, and that is that the Prime Minister’s office did it. There was not some homophobic gremlin in IT services that mysteriously plopped it from the guide, and it was ideological, and it was unacceptable.

Q: The Speech From the Throne had a lot of talk about free trade agreements and breaking down tariff barriers. You’re the trade critic, so I wanted to get your thoughts on those.
A: This government has provided Canada with the first trade deficit in thirty years. That results from a failure to defend our interests effectively against US protectionism in our largest market, and a failure to diversify our markets and deepen our trade relationships with some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, particularly China and India. For the first three years, the Harper government treated China with contempt and India with neglect. Only recently have they shown any interest in any of those countries. With China in particular, it will take us a long time to undo the damage wrought on the traditionally favoured and strong Canada-Chinese relationship.

Q: They’ve mentioned reintroducing the Colombia agreement, and I know this has been tied up in the House a lot the last time, given that the NDP and the Bloc were filibustering. Any signs that that might change this time around, or will it be an exercise in more of the same?
A: The discussion on human rights in Colombia in Canada has resulted from this free trade agreement, which is direct evidence that economic engagement fortifies and augments the capacity to engage on human rights issues. We would not be having the discussion on Colombian human rights if we were not talking about economic engagement and free trade. The key is to work to ensure an ongoing dialogue.

Mr. Speaker, on February 20, the residents of Madeira Island suffered a devastating flood that caused several billion dollars in damage, injured hundreds of people and, sadly, left 42 people dead.
Torrential rainfall, the highest ever recorded in Portugal, caused landslides, washed away bridges and nearly destroyed entire villages.
I congratulate members of the Portuguese Canadian community as well as many other concerned Canadians who have already contributed, and I encourage the government and all Canadians to join the relief efforts by giving to one of the various funds that have been established.
We, the members of the House of Commons, pledge complete solidarity with the people of Madeira. We are absolutely committed to lending our support in any way we can, in order to help our friends cope with this disaster.

Back to Question Period, it was John McCallum leading off for the Liberals yesterday (with Harper congratulating him for his “promotion”), and after the question on 10 percenters, McCallum asked Harper, “from one economist to another,” about EI premiums going up next year. Harper said that the Liberals planned to raise taxes. (Incidentally, while McCallum actually worked as an economist, Harper never has).

Marlene Jennings made the link between the loss in research dollars and youth unemployment (who do you think is assisting in that research?); Gilles Duceppe asked once again about the HST negotiations with Quebec; and Jack Layton asked about his prorogation motion, that would be the Opposition Day motion following Question Period. Harper told him it would require a constitutional amendment. The motion did pass at the end of the day – just barely, at 139 to 135. But it was simply a motion, and not binding in the Standing Orders, or anything else that might influence constitutional conventions.

Layton moved onto the issue of the need for contraception in the government’s lofty plans to address maternal and child health in the developing world. Bev Oda kept repeating their plans were about saving lives with nutrition and vaccination – even when Carolyn Bennett later stood up to point out that 1.5 million deaths every year are related to a lack of contraception, and that 215 million women want contraception and can’t get it. Not that Oda would change her talking point. Incidentally, people have looked into the policies of our G8 partners, and oh, look – the UK, US and European Union all say contraception is important.

There was one other narrative during Question Period, about new revelations in the Afghan detainee file. This time it’s a leaked letter published in the Globe and Mail, which shows Canada, the US and the UK promised to build a prison in Afghanistan to house detainees, and then never did. Also, they’ve scaled back on inspections because they were “disruptive” for Afghan officials. The government kept going on about the 2007 transfer agreement, but if this leaked letter demonstrates that we’re now only checking up once a month and with plenty of advance notice, doesn’t that make much of the 2007 agreement, well, moot? Oh, wait – I’m not supposed to question these kinds of things, lest I be accused of not supporting the troops.

Sartorially speaking, it’s the Saint Patrick’s Day edition. There was a fair amount of green in the Chamber (which in and of itself is already done in green), but not quite as much uptake from the MPs as I might have expected. Regardless, best green tie goes to Scott Brison, who not only had an eye-catching shade, but if you got up close to see it, you could see it was printed with tiny little martini glasses with orange slices on the rims. “It’s a once-a-year tie,” Brison said. Cheekiest use of green went to Conservative MP Gary Schellenberger, who hauled out his mint-ice-cream green jacket that occasionally graces the chamber. Boldest use of green was newcomer Conservative Scott Armstrong’s emerald shirt, which was difficult to miss. And most eye-catching non-green outfit was Hedy Fry’s leopard print dress. Only Hedy can wear leopard print and get away with it like that. The Megan Leslie outfit watch was surprised to see that Leslie wore not a stitch of green – a grey suit and grey shoes with a dull blue-and-yellow shirt with the built-in bow down the front. I would have thought, given Leslie’s penchant for bright colours, she would have been all over the green theme.

Apparently those plans to cut the access to internet program? Was an “honest mistake” by Senior Industry Canada bureaucrats. Uh huh. Once again, this government blames the bureaucrats rather than looking at their own leadership. Not that we’re surprised.

And the Conservatives are going to stand up to the NDP’s attempt to compensate artists for pirated music by way of an “iPod levy,” because they’re such dedicated tax fighters, yo. As demonstrated by the way they raised income taxes to pay for their first GST cut, their decision to tax income trusts, raise airport security fees and EI premiums.

Up today – Michael Ignatieff is in Winnipeg to talk about Aboriginal issues on his cross-country tour.

Liberal MP Rob Oliphant has changed up his duties just a bit in the current sitting of Parliament - giving up some committee duties to focus on other ones for the party, as well as his critic portfolio. I caught up with him after Question Period today.

Q: How are you shaping up for committees this sitting? You said you were getting off the Public Safety committee?
A: I’m off Public Safety, and I’m on Veteran’s Affairs as Vice-Chair.

Q: As Vice-Chair, does this mean a whole new set of responsibilities for you?
A: No, I was Vice-Chair before. So we’re pushing the agenda a little bit further. The committee has had a very flexible, non-partisan sort of approach, and I’m not saying I’m making it more partisan – what I am doing is pushing the veterans’ agenda a little more strongly, and if that means I have to get a little more partisan, I’ll get a little more partisan. It’s become a little bit more aggressive an approach on veterans’ issues.

Q: Any other projects you’ve got coming up this sitting that you’re looking forward to?
A: Yes – I have taken on a new role, which is essentially multicultural engagement, and I’m coordinating that for the caucus. It’s a fairly major amount of work, looking at the various cultural communities in Canada, and setting some priorities with respect to time, the leader’s time, resources, effort, and trying to coordinate our work there a bit better.

Q: You’re hosting an event on Friday. Tell me a little bit about that.
A: I was asked to sponsor – the reality is the [LGBT] Chambers of Commerce for Quebec and Ontario are having an event here, and because they want to have it on the Hill, they’ve asked to have an MP sponsor it and I agreed readily. Frankly, I believe they’re here for a couple of days and they’re doing a lot of business networking and attempting to establish relationships. My hosting that event on Friday is to bring people together, and it’s good – it’s fun, and they chose a gay MP to host it, but Denis Schryburt is a great organiser and he asked me to host it, so I’m doing it.