The cross-examination of Stephen Harper

The NDP has uploaded video of Thomas Mulcair’s questions yesterday afternoon for the Prime Minister.

It’s obviously not the usual approach to Question Period, but it projects a certain seriousness, onto both the proceedings and the issue being discussed. It certainly helps here that there are so many questions that remain to be answered. And Mr. Mulcair still managed to get in a denunciation—“Mr. Speaker, we are asking very simple, straightforward questions and the Prime Minister is not answering them. That is the problem. Canadians want answers.”—that could be clipped for the evening news. (It was my sense, watching yesterday, that the Prime Minister had prepared himself for a yelling contest.)

Mr. Mulcair’s approach made for maybe the most fascinating Question Period since Mr. Harper and Stephane Dion took repeated turns yelling at each other at the height of the coalition madness in 2008.