Connect the dots between the events of the first instructive week of the 43rd Parliament and the resulting picture is that of a House of Commons more apt to be relevant to the political conversation than it has been in at least a decade.

Here are some highlights:

The decision by the Bloc Québécois to cut to the chase on the throne speech by declaring, within minutes of its presentation last Thursday, that it would support the government’s agenda was as unexpected as it was refreshing.

The Conservatives and the New Democrats professed dismay at what they depicted as a dereliction of the duty to hold the government to account. In fact, they should probably have been thankful for the opportunity to have the opposition majority in the Commons wait for something more solid than the mush of a throne speech to sink its teeth into.

An early spell of opposition brinkmanship over the speech would only have sent a poor signal to the many Canadians — not all of them Liberal voters — who hope that the new dynamics in Parliament will result in something more than an overdose of partisanship.

It did not get a lot of coverage but on the day after the throne speech, the prime minister ditched his prepared notes to respond to Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s just delivered critique of the government’s agenda.

It was a rare change from the well-honed parliamentary practice that mostly sees leaders talk past each other. Rather than just hype the obvious differences between the Liberals and Conservatives to spin his approach, Trudeau also laid out a fair amount of common ground between the two.

On Tuesday, the Bloc Québécois drew its first line in the sand of the minority House of Commons, sending notice that it was not prepared to support the tripartite trade deal (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA) designed to replace NAFTA.

That should not put a wrench in the adoption of agreement’s implementation legislation early next year. It is hard to see how Scheer’s Conservatives could stand against the new NAFTA without putting themselves on a collision course not only with Canada’s business community but also with provincial allies such as Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.

But Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet’s play has the merit of shedding some useful early light on the relationship between the Bloc and Quebec Premier François Legault.

Since the election the latter has insisted that the Bloc was not going to be a conduit for his government. This seems to be a case in point. On the trade deal, the two are not singing from the same songbook.

Blanchet claims Canada sold off Quebec’s aluminum industry at the negotiating table. But that contention is based not on some last-minute concession on aluminum but on gains scored by the steel industry.

Under U. S. pressure, Mexico agreed to a tighter definition of what would constitute North American steel under the agreement’s automotive rules but refused to have the same narrower criteria applied to aluminum.

As a result, the latest version of the agreement, as it pertains to aluminum, is unchanged from the text Legault supported last year. At the time the premier had noted that those dispositions were an improvement on NAFTA. Legault would have to eat his own words to now call on Parliament to reject the USMCA.

Also on Tuesday the third parties joined forces with the Conservative official opposition to exact the creation of a special parliamentary committee to look into Canada’s troubled relationship with China.

For the better part of a year, the prime minister and his cabinet have for the most part blown smoke in response to queries on what has become its most sensitive foreign affairs file. Transparency if not truth has been one of the casualties of the operation to date.

In the best-case scenario, the work of the committee will bring Canada’s parliamentarians back into the loop of an increasingly vigorous public debate over Canada/China relations.

Provided its members rise to the challenge of not letting their partisan interests get in the way of their judgment, the discussion could do with more input on their part.

One of the features of the previous Liberal government was a gap between its contention that it communicated well and the reality that it — as often as not — chose to not communicate anything of substance.

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Over the past four years, Trudeau’s Liberals have regularly exhibited an inability or an unwillingness to articulate the rationale behind their policy choices.

But a minority government does not have the luxury of brushing off questions with bromides or at least not if the opposition majority does not allow it to get away with the practice.

On this score at least, the new Parliament is off to a decent start.

Chantal Hébert is a columnist based in Ottawa covering politics. Follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert

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