Politics

QP Live: Just try not to be distracted by Alberta’s election

Your daily dose of political theatre

Adrian Wyld/CP

Adrian Wyld/CP

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is question period. If you’ve never watched, check out our primer. Today, QP runs from 2:15 p.m. until just past 3. We livestream and liveblog all the action.

The blog

The context

Mike Duffy’s criminal trial is on hold until next Monday. A new poll says, in broad strokes, more people in Canada are happy about their economic plight than are unhappy. Yesterday, the auditor general’s spring report left Stephen Harper’s critics disappointed—maybe this time, they’d hoped, Michael Ferguson would finally, after so many tries, track down that secret, massively corrupt government program that Harper’s haters swear they saw coming a mile away. No Duffy for a few days. No budget backlash at the steps of Parliament Hill. No suggestion that the Prime Minister is hoarding cash in spare moments. God, who stole all the intrigue?

Meanwhile, far to Ottawa’s west, an election campaign has Albertans wondering about life without a Progressive Conservative government. They’ve wondered such things at least several times since the PC dynasty took hold in 1971, and thought they had their minds made up in 2012 before betraying such ambition. But this time, those rabble-rousing left-wingers who run the NDP, and haven’t won more than a handful of seats since Progressive Conservatives ran Ottawa, actually think they have a chance. Alberta votes on May 5. For now, those of us who can’t help but fix ourselves on question period are contented with Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair, Justin Trudeau, and maybe even Elizabeth May, if she’s lucky.

The caucuses all meet today in Centre Block, and they all walk down the hall to the House of Commons dutifully riled. This could at least be a banner day for noise.

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