Flaherty and his post-budget QP performance:The record

Was Jim Flaherty benched during Question Period after suggesting his party might back away from a 2011 platform promise on income splitting? Flaherty said next to nothing in Wednesday’s Question Period, the first one following the tabling of his budget on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the PM took an unprecedented number of questions. And the first minister to follow Harper was Employment MInister Jason Kenney, who, after Flaherty had backed away from the income splitting commitment had loudly affirmed that commitment to reporters.

Today, Flaherty was in the House answering questions — on income splitting, of course — and stuck to a very particular phrase, the same phrase Harper would stick to at an event near Toronto. (Harper was not in the House today.) Conservative sources are telling reporters, including me, that Harper and Flaherty both believe that their campaign commitment of 2011 now needs a re-think. Fine. Still don’t understand why Question Period unfolded in such an odd way yesterday.

So I looked back at all of the 10 Question Periods which immediately followed the tabling of a budget. Turns out Flaherty played a central role in them only a handful of times and in fact, missed 5 post-budget QPs. Here’s the tale of the tape: 

• May 3, 2006: After the first Conservative budget in a very long time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper takes 7 questions but only those put to him by other leaders in the first post-budget QP session. This has been his practice since becoming PM. In any Question Period, he will usually only answer questions put to him by a party leader or by one of his own MPs. In this QP, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is in the mix early and answers 8 questions. Diane Finley, the Human Resources minister takes 8 questions as well, many related to budget matters.
• March 20, 2007: Harper answers 15 from leaders and from other MPs, including one very late in the session but Flaherty is in the mix early and takes 16 questions.  So lots of questions on the budget, pretty much evenly split between the PM and his finance minister.
• February 28, 2008: Flaherty figures in a bit later here, taking a mid-session question from Thomas Mulcair, who was then NDP finance critic. But that’s it. Just the 2 questions from Mulcair. Harper takes the bare minimum 6 questions — only those put to him by the three party leaders while Lawrence Cannon, then Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, is the first minister after Harper to take questions and he takes 7 in the session. Monte Solberg, then Human Resources minister, takes 2.
• January 28, 2009: The budget in this year is the one that comes right after the great coalition crisis and the long prorogation, the hottest political water the Harper government has ever found itself in. Then Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff opens up the first post-budget QP with a question about making sure there is a “framework for accountability” for all the spending the Tories have just announced. Harper answered that and 7 other questions. All of the questions he answered were asked by a party leader. Early in the session, there is a question about the budget from a non-leader and Flaherty’s Parliamentary Secretary Ted Menzies takes that 9 other questions. Hansard does not record a member’s presence or absence in the House but Hansard has no record of Flaherty saying anything in the House — either in QP or at any other time — on the day after tabling his 2009 budget. News reports at the time show Flaherty was selling the budget the next day at events in Ajax and then Whitby, Ont. and, by the following day, he was in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum annual meetings. This would be the first of five post-budget QPs Flaherty would miss.
• March 5, 2010: The budget this year was presented on a Thursday which means the first post-budget QP falls on a Friday. The Friday QP session, which begins at 11:15 a.m. instead of 2:15 pm., is rarely attended by any party leaders and usually by only a handful of MPs. That said, opposition leader Michael Ignatieff was there and  led off with a question about pensions and seniors. The question was answered by John Baird, then the Minister of Transport. This pattern would suggest that Harper was not in the House — as per his usual Friday practice — take questions on the budget or any other matter. Ignatieff appears to have been the only party leader present for Question Period as Hansard indicates nothing was said in the House this Friday by either Gilles Duceppe or Jack Layton. Similarly, it appears Flaherty was also absent.
• March 23, 2011: This is the budget that would be defeated, bringing down the government and leading to the 2011 general election. And yet, despite the significance of this budget, it appears Harper skipped the first QP after Flaherty’s budget presentation on March 22. John Baird is tapped to answer questions from then Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff while Lawrence Cannon, then foreign affairs minister, takes budget questions from Gilles Duceppe. But when a Bloc MP that is not Duceppe asks a question, Flaherty is up and up early. In fact, when Layton, also a party leader, get his first question in, it is Flaherty that responds to Layton. But that’s it for Flaherty who takes just 4 questions for the whole session. Meanwhile, a whole raft of other cabinet ministers respond to budget-related questions including Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Rob Moore, Julian Fantino, Stockwell Day, and Diane Finley.
• June 7, 2011: So Harper has his majority and they know the budget — with only minor changes from the one a few month earlier — will pass. The first question of the session comes, of course, from the Leader of the Official Opposition — the NDP’s Jack Layton. Layton’s first question is about job creation and Harper answers but not before congratulating Layton and the NDP on their historic win. Layton gives the floor to his finance critic Peggy Nash for a question in the first round and it is Shelly Glover who answers, not Flaherty. Glover is Flaherty’s parliamentary secretary and, given that parliamentary secretaries generally answer when the minister is out of the House, we may assume Flaherty was absent for this first post-budget QP. This is the third time he would be absent for a post-budget QP. (See 2009 and 2010). Glover would answer 8 budget-related questions. Haprer would answer just 5 questions that day — 3 from Layton and 2 from Bob Rae. With one fewer party leader in the House (though Elizabeth May is an MP at this point, neither the Greens nor the Bloc are officially recognized as a party in the House) and with Harper having established the practice of responding usually only to questions from party leaders, we are learning that we are going to hear even less from the country’s prime minister in the House of Commons during this Parliament.
• March 30, 2012: Once again, the first post-budget QP is on a Friday. Budget questions are handled by Baird, now Foreign Affairs Minister, and Shelly Glover, still the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Finance. This is the 4th post-budget QP Flaherty is absent for and the second one at which the PM is absent.
• March 22, 2013: The budget was tabled on a Thursday again this year which means the lame-duck Friday QP session features the so-called ‘B’ team, with John Baird playing the role of the prime minister, Nathan Cullen playing the role of the leader of the opposition, and Pierre Poilievre playing the role of Jim Flaherty. No evidence in Hansard that Harper or Flaherty attending QP this day. 5th post-budget QP Flaherty has missed and 3rd post-budget QP Harper has missed.
• February 12, 2014: This is the post-budget QP that had me and many others suggesting Flaherty had been benched. Harper took an unusually high numberer of budget questions, including a question from a 5th row backbencher of the third party (Chrystia Freeland) 30 minutes into the session! He just never does that. The first time Harper yielded the floor to another minister, it was to Jason Kenney, the employment minister (3 questions). Then the junior employment minister, Candice Bergen (2 questions). Then a minister of state, Greg Rickford (3 questions). Flaherty stayed in his seat and applauded them all finally getting to his feet at the end of the session for 1 ½ answers (His first was cut off by the Speaker!). Harper took an unprecedented 21 questions on this budget.