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He showed none whatsoever in absolutely ignoring the specific questions being put to him, and issuing a nearly identical and fully irrelevant answer to every single different inquiry during question period. Opposition leader Andrew Scheer asked about 15 particular questions and to each one the prime minister gave, with minuscule variation, a gauzy non sequitur about his concern for jobs and the middle class and something about the rule of law. He could just as easily have risen and said “it’s raining in Tanzania now” or “cats have four legs and a tail” for all the connection his answers had to the questions before him. The Liberals sometimes applauded the travesty, thought we must believe — they are human — there were inwardly ashamed of his pure witless evasions.

One other feature of the week was the prime minister’s determinedly robotic turn in Wednesday’s question period

Meantime if “jobs for the middle class” were the prime minister’s heart’s desire, he might have stepped out of the Commons and said at least a hello to the gathering of truckers who had driven all the way, in coldest February, from Alberta to Parliament Hill. They were there to describe how things are for working people in Alberta (and other provinces) since the oil industry has been battered by world prices, the fire in Fort McMurray, the killing of pipeline projects, the stalling on the remaining Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, and the flight of capital (another multi-billion-dollar oil company announced this week that it was packing up for the U.S.).

Most of them were salt-of-the-earth types, not the professional agitators, perpetual demonstrators and seasoned road-blockers that constitute Canada’s protesting class. There are two groups: those who make a living out of protest (see above); and those who protest (and only as a last resort) because they can’t make a living. The former in fact, are very much the reason the latter had to come to Ottawa.