The Conservatives moved into full-blown attack mode on the Robocon front in today’s QP, completely abandoning the more contrite tone they struck earlier in the week. Turmel began by asking which of Dean Del Mastro’s competing assertions was correct – whether the Conservatives were or were not conducting an internal investigation on the robo-calls, but Harper immediately snapped that they had already provided Elections Canada with information and that this was all starting to look like an orchestrated smear campaign. And when Pat Martin got up to deliver his own hyperbolic questions in high dudgeon, Dean Del Mastro gave the “unsubstantiated smear campaign” response. Bob Rae brought up the campaign of harassment of Jewish voters in Liberal ridings, and Harper responded that Jewish voters voted overwhelmingly Conservative – oh, and you’re taking part in an unsubstantiated smear campaign.

Alexandre Boulerice and Charlie Angus continued on the robo-call questions, asking for specific calling company contracts (Del Mastro: Smear campaign! Note: He stopped denying the existence of Edmonton East. Rescued from the memory hole!); Alexandrine Latendresse and David Christopherson asked about the chief electoral officer’s request for more investigative powers (Del Mastro: We always provide documents to Elections Canada – and smear campaign!); Peter Julian asked about job cuts in the public service (Clement: Efficiencies, jobs, growth, etc); and Irene Mathyssen asked about the government's overestimation of the costs of OAS (Finley: We need to take action now!). Frank Valeriote asked about connections in the Guelph robo-calling investigation, Judy Foote demanded the scripts for those call centres, and Ralph Goodale wanted the phone logs tabled (Del Mastro: Smear campaign!). Olivia Chow and Jamie Nicholls asked about cuts to transportation safety training, and Malcolm Allen and Jean Rousseau asked about cuts to food inspectors (Ritz: Not true – we hired lots of new inspectors!).

Round three saw questions on French language of work, conditional sentences, robo-calls, Japan’s F-35 contract, a mining accident, the Northern Gateway pipeline, and transferring some infrastructure to a particular municipality.

Sartorially speaking, it was Pink Shirt Day to combat bullying, and there was good representation among MPs, but not consistent, even among many queer MPs. That said, snaps go out to Glenn Thibeault for his grey suit with the pink shirt and tie, and to Judy Foote for her pale pink jacket. Style citations go out to Jasbir Sandhu for another fluorescent-blue shirt/charcoal suit violation, and to Lynne Yelich for her poorly cut caramel jacket with a Burberry-patterned scarf. Dishonourable mention to Bal Gosal for a black suit and tie with a lemon-yellow shirt.

Today in Robocon revelations, court documents show a number of calls between the Conservative campaign office in Guelph and RackNine – the company that did the robo-calling – despite the fact that the office had filed no expenses showing payments to said company. (Court filings can be found here.) And more bizarrely, the burner cellphone was registered to a “Pierre Poutine” from “Separatist Avenue” in Joliette, Quebec – a name that reeks of fratboyism, or the belief that an Alberta company like RackNine would swallow it. Well, perhaps not – apparently that wasn’t the name the individual used with RackNine, and there is a Pierre’s Poutine in Guelph, but still.

The Conservative staffer who left his job over the allegations has broken his silence and denies involvement, but apparently he walked before he was pushed – which is another interesting twist. On the Toronto Star front, Tonda McCharles looks at the Conservative voter-ID database, while Susan Delacourt points one in the direction of its selling features. The former Liberal candidate in Ottawa-Orleans is making fresh robo-call allegations from the last election. On the other side, former Conservative war-room operative Jason Lietar throws some reasonable doubt into the whole robo-call situation, which is worth considering.

In related news, the company that made those reprehensible calls into Irwin Cotler’s riding is under investigation by the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association and is likely to lose its “gold seal.” (Here is a list of gold seal members.)

The Conservatives want to haul the former Liberal staffer behind the VikiLeaks account to a Commons committee. The problem? They want to summon him to the ethics committee, which is not, in fact, the committee with the mandate for the issue. That committee would be procedure and house affairs, but hey, that won’t make for as good of a headline.

New data shows the government has been overestimating the costs of OAS – which leads to the belief that this data undermines their arguments for why OAS needs to be reformed at some vague and distant point in the future.

The parliamentary budget officer has a new report that looks at the costs of the portion of the omnibus crime bill that deals with ending conditional sentences and finds that it’s going to drive the costs of incarceration way up, especially for the provinces. And it’s no surprise that the Conservatives won’t budge on it, nor does it appear that they even did their own costing, which is a sad state of affairs.

And music industry groups were on the Hill to talk about the copyright bill, and they want amendments made.

With more Robocon revelations continuing to pour out in the media, it was a chance to see if the New Democrats could actually carry the ball they dropped yesterday when it came to effective questioning. And so, when Nycole Turmel got up to ask about robo-call allegations, entering one of the dubious phone numbers into the record, Harper took a new tactic in response – did the NDP not engage in harassing robo-calls in Lise St-Denis’s riding after she crossed the floor, which jammed her office’s phone lines? Is the pot calling the kettle black? No, Turmel insisted – they’re totally different things because Robocon was about voter suppression – but now on the defensive, momentum dissipated, never mind when Pat Martin got up for the day’s bout of hyperbole (with bonus odd reference to the Conservatives’ “moral sextant,” which apparently measures the latitude of their morality as opposed to the direction, as a moral compass would). Dean Del Mastro called for the New Democrats to forward their evidence to Elections Canada. And when Bob Rae got up to demand that the Conservatives turn over their own evidence – the contracts and invoices to the phone bank companies – Harper hit back with the Liberal complicity in VikiLeaks “smears” and then insinuated that the various robo-call accusations were smears against dozens of Conservative MPs that Rae needed to apologize for. Again, momentum stalled.

Not that the questions on robo-calling stopped. Alexandre Boulerice demanded information on the Conservative connections to RMG and RackNine (Poilievre: Turn over your evidence); Charlie Angus read another suspicious phone number into record (Del Mastro: Turn over your evidence); David Christopherson hysterically demanded more powers for the chief electoral officer (Del Mastro: Turn over your evidence); and Guy Caron asked about the Service Canada centre closed in Rimouski in favour of one in Thetford Mines (Finley: This was based on a competitive process). Irwin Cotler reiterated the attacks against him by Conservatives and connected them to the robo-call issue (Del Mastro: We didn’t place any misleading calls – err, except the ones they admitted to in Cotler’s riding, right?); Frank Valeriote wondered about all of those close ridings and the robo-call campaign (Del Mastro: We totally deny involvement); and then Rae got up to ask about the Ottawa Citizen's revelations, where court documents showed a number of calls between the Conservatives and RackNine (and that the burner cellphone at the centre of this was registered to “Pierre Poutine” – no, seriously), and could he account for those? Del Mastro again denied involvement. Jack Harris asked about the PBO report on conditional sentencing (Nicholson: We’re acting on our beliefs that child molesters shouldn’t get house arrest); Sylvain Chicoine added the costs to provinces to that question (Nicholson: We don’t think arsonists should get house arrest after they burn down someone else’s house); and Don Davies and Sonia Groguhé asked about the ability of the minister to strip a refugee claimant's citizenship if his or her country of origin is subsequently deemed “safe” (Kenney: That’s not in C-31 but is already in the law as a power of the independent IRB).

Round three saw questions on the job bank shutdown, the closure of an Arctic research station, the forthcoming aerospace industry program review, more RackNine/Conservative questions (first from the Liberals and then a single one from the NDP), demanding support for the NDP French language-of-work bill, yesterday’s revelations on Rights & Democracy, and seal exports to Russia.

Overall, I would like to point out that the Liberals were nimble in being able to get the new revelations of RackNine/Conservative connections into QP as it happened, whereas it took another 15 minutes for the NDP to get a single scripted question in there, allowing the Liberals to get in more questions on the issue before them. And for as much as the topic is robo-calling, the government responses were pretty robotic in that members were largely repeating the same line continuously.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to James Bezan for a dark grey suit with a white shirt and purple tie and pocket square, and to Michelle Rempel for her own dark silver/grey jacket and skirt with a black top. Style citations go out to both Jacques Gourde and Charlie Angus for repeat grey suit/fluorescent-blue shirt violations, and to Kellie Leitch for her long jacket that was a kind of yellow-green shade with bright green reflective patterns that looked like they were possibly in the shapes of shamrocks.

Hold your guns, everyone! Peter MacKay insists that the robo-calls were an “isolated incident” and that the guilty party has already been caught, so no need to go further.  And Mike Duffy says it’s a “third party” who was responsible. Err, except this came out – a damning revelation by a former call-centre employee who had been hired by the Conservatives to call out and tell people about changed polling locations that didn’t make any sense, and yes, she did complain to the RCMP (only to be told there was nothing they could do about it), and Elections Canada. Susan Delacourt wants the party to produce the scripts they had those call centres use. Bob Rae wants the contracts and invoices for the various call centres the Conservatives employed. Kady O’Malley tracks the ridings where polling locations had actually changed, and it doesn’t match up to the Conservative explanations. Meanwhile, over in Waterloo, there are allegations of phone tricks of another kind – a Liberal campaign office’s phone lines being jammed by incoming fax tones. And Maher and McGregor dig deeper into what went down in Guelph and elsewhere with those robo-calls.

A Liberal staffer was unmasked as the culprit behind the “VikiLeaks” account, and he immediately resigned. Rae took personal responsibility and offered an unequivocal and personal apology to Toews. You know, the kind of apology the Conservatives never offer. Instead, the Conservatives came back with this gem full of accusations. Klassy!

Meanwhile, the National Post has done some digging and found even more damaging revelations about just what went down at Rights & Democracy – the government-sponsored rights promotion agency whose chairman died of a heart attack amid attacks by Conservative appointees to the board and bitter disputes within the organization that led up to it. There remain plenty more unanswered questions, but in light of everything else that has been said about this organization, it paints a bleak picture of what appointments made by the Harper government have done to our foreign policy credibility as a result. Paul Wells parses the revelations here.

Not that it’s a surprise, but the Senate passed only Conservative amendments to the omnibus crime bill and voted down all Liberal ones.

The Commons voted unanimously to support a non-binding NDP opposition day motion on First Nations education. Which is great symbolism, for what good it will do. But can I also remind you that if the government votes for your opposition-day motion, you’re doing it wrong. You’re not actually “getting things done” the way you claim. Opposition-day motions are when opposition parties are supposed to say why the government doesn’t deserve supply – that is, the money they want to carry out their programs. And because opposition parties can’t seem to remember this simple fact these days but would rather debate feel-good motions instead – no matter how worthy or important those goals may be – it ultimately means they’re not doing their jobs, and it does continue to have a deleterious effect on Parliament’s ability to do its job properly.

The head of the Royal Canadian Navy says, Don’t worry, things are tickety boo with the submarines, and yes, we really do need them. Also needed – a “Big Honkin’ Ship,” also known as an amphibious assault ship, which would be incredibly useful for relief missions where the ports are blocked, like what happened in Haiti.

And MPs want a red light on the camera that’s currently on in the Chamber – you know, so that they can talk into it or be sure that they look engaged, rather than, oh, you know, actually engaging in the debate and not simply being room meat whose sole purpose is to ensure quorum while canned speeches are recited in isolation, because the MP flees the House as soon as he or she is finished. But hey, you know, this is show biz, and it’s all about the illusion of democracy rather than having MPs who do their jobs.

There was a sense of definite frisson in the House for a Monday, which often tend to be sleepy. Harper was present (unusual for a Monday), and the press gallery was full for a change, and we waited for the robo-call questions to be answered. And then Nycole Turmel stood . . . and meandered around the issues of voter suppression and wondering what Harper wants to do to increase voter turnout instead. And Harper stood up and denied any knowledge of what had gone on and asked the NDP to turn over to Elections Canada what information they had. Pat Martin got up to deliver bluster and hyperbole (and suggestions that it wasn’t the gunman in the book depository that killed JFK) over said robo-calls, with the added demand that the Conservatives turn over information on their connections to Campaign Research, but Dean Del Mastro got up to repeat Harper’s lines. Bob Rae got his turn and made a much more forceful demand that Harper take personal responsibility for the robo-call issue, but Harper continued to proclaim innocence and repeated yet again the call for the Liberals to turn over what information they had, and oh yeah, their reliance on baseless attacks were what lost them the election, apparently.

Alexandre Boulerice and Charlie Angus each kept up the robo-call questions, adding in RackNine’s involvement (Poilievre delivered Harper’s lines in French, and Del Mastro in English), and when Angus changed topics to the lawful access bill, Toews continued to allege that Angus hasn’t actually read the bill. You know, like he did. Guy Caron wondered about a conflict of interest with a Service Canada centre being set up in Rimouski (Finley: The site was chosen by officials based on the lowest bid), and Olivia Chow asked about the VIA Rail derailment yesterday (Lebel: Transport Canada will provide TSB with assistance). Frank Valeriote, Carolyn Bennett and Marc Garneau returned to the robo-call issue, Bennett going so far as to call for an end to the “I am not a crook” rhetoric, to which Del Mastro informed her that voter turnout was actually up this election. Dan Harris asked about the hospitality for those European bureaucrats but styled them as Harper’s “insider friends,” which was a bit much (Del Mastro: The event was in keeping with international protocol), and Matthew Kellway asked about more F-35 delays (Fantino gave his best impression of a robo-call while reciting his usual talking points about how great the F-35s are).

Round three saw questions on Canadian arms exports, the immigration backlog, muzzling scientists, the loophole of Chinese investment in Canada undermining the sanctions on Iran, the residential schools report, the cancellation of a “cellphone plan calculator,” drug shortages, francophone disaster-claims assistance, and one last shot at calling for a public inquiry into the robo-calls.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Maxime Bernier for his tailored grey suit with the light-blue shirt and tie, and to Lisa Raitt for her black top with a trim black leather jacket (with what I believe was a faux snakeskin pattern). Style citations go out to LaVar Payne for a grey suit with a white-collared black shirt and a white tie, and to Ève Péclet for a fuchsia jacket with a sheer black top that one could see through on the television. Possibly not appropriate for the House.