Over his three years in office Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke on more occasions in the House of Commons than any other MP — with the exception of the Speaker and his deputy. In so doing he may have set a record.

Based on the parliamentary database, Trudeau spent significantly more time on his feet defending his government in the House than his immediate predecessor, Stephen Harper.

With the 42nd Parliament about to enter its last stretch before the fall election, the records show the prime minister has already spoken 2,696 times since it opened in late 2015.

By comparison, Harper spoke in the House 1,853 times over his last majority term.

Trudeau’s interventions were almost exclusively recorded during question period rather than during debates over legislation.

The numbers reflect his decision — made almost two years ago — to import the Westminster model of devoting one question period weekly to questions to the prime minister. Up to that point, government leaders tended to only answer questions from their fellow party leaders.

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The experiment has resulted in a steep increase in the number of opposition MPs engaging with the prime minister, but also in an even more dominating Trudeau presence in the parliamentary news cycle.

That may have had some unintended consequences:

Every prime minister tends to become a more polarizing figure as time goes on. After only one term, anecdotal evidence suggests that animosity toward Trudeau has increased faster than in the case of his Liberal predecessors. It is certainly more vocal.

A toxic social media environment does foster more visceral hatred of politicians but having the prime minister in one’s face in an antagonistic role on a more regular basis almost certainly contributes to the phenomenon.

In 2018, the Conservative Party broke a fundraising record for a non-election year. Trudeau may want to claim an assist in the opposition’s success. He has given the official opposition more opportunities to showcase its MPs in action — or, as they would put it, fighting the good fight — against the prime minister than any of his predecessors.

Every prime minister tends to stand head and shoulders above his cabinet. None has ever needed more exposure in question period to remind voters of his or her existence. The same is not true of cabinet ministers, especially in the case of a rookie government.

With 867 interventions, Finance Minister Bill Morneau comes a distant second to Trudeau in the Liberal speaking tally during question period. But if one subtracted the many times Morneau was on his feet to respond to attacks on his integrity over the fall of 2017, the gap between Trudeau’s front-line role in question period and his ministerial runner-up would be ever larger.

The prime minister likes to talk about the depth of his caucus team but it has not been easy to measure that depth in the House.

Finally, as a rule, question period is never as raucous as when the prime minister is in attendance. Think of it as the equivalent giving a classroom of kids a collective sugar hit. Trudeau’s more active participation has essentially translated into more such hits. It has had the opposite of a calming effect.

In his approach to Parliament, Trudeau is an outlier in other ways. He has been as economical in dispensing updates to his government’s road map as he has been generous with his time in question period. Last fall, he passed on the opportunity to reset his government’s with a new speech from the throne.

Those of his predecessors who ran majority governments all presented more than one throne speech over their terms in office and some, like Trudeau’s father, drafted as many as four over as many years.

But then, as in the case of Harper before him, some of the issues that ended up dominating Trudeau’s agenda were not on the radar of his throne speech. But as his reelection campaign nears, he can be thankful for the wild cards he was dealt by comparison to his predecessor.

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In the parliamentary database, trade agreements (as in, for instance, NAFTA) come second only to government accountability in the list of top topics discussed in the current Parliament.

Over Harper’s last term, allegations of fraud occupied the same runner-up position in the topics ranking, essentially because of the Senate spending scandal that plagued the last Conservative years in office.

And yet, absent a scandal of a similar magnitude, the air in the House of Commons is not expected to be any less toxic over the last six months of the 42nd Parliament than in the dying days of the previous government.

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

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