Harper has only made it to one third of question periods thi

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Harper has only made it to one third of question periods this year — his lowest rate since becoming PM

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Glen McGregor, Postmedia News | May 19, 2015 | Last Updated: May 19 8:41 AM ET


QUOTE: "“Most Canadians, if they don’t show up for work, they don’t get a promotion,” Layton famously quipped."


OTTAWA — Stephen Harper has skipped out on answering opposition questions in the House of Commons more often in 2015 than in any other year he has been prime minister.

Harper has attended only 35 per cent of the daily question periods in 2015, his lowest rate for any year since 2006, an Ottawa Citizen analysis found.

Question Period attendance records (SEE CHART)

The trend reflects what critics say is an increasingly inaccessible prime minister, who rarely holds news conferences and who, last week, signalled he would not participate in election leaders’ debates organized by a consortium of broadcasters.

Now he has less time for question period where, by convention, the prime minister is held to account by MPs for his government’s performance.

Harper’s attendance’s rate in the 45-minute question-and-response sessions has declined almost every year but dropped more sharply in 2014 and 2015, the review of House of Commons transcripts shows.

In 2006, his first year on the job, Harper responded to questions on 64 per cent of House of Commons sitting days.

But in 2013, when he faced hundreds of queries about his role in the Senate expense scandal, he made it to only 46 per cent of question periods.

The downward trend continued in 2014, when he attended only 36 per cent.

In April and May of this year, he has made it to only six of 22 sessions (27 per cent).

His attendance this year has been markedly worse than that of the past two Liberal prime ministers in their final years in office.

It is considered unparliamentary to refer to another MP’s absence in the House of Commons, but in a scrum with journalists on Wednesday, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair referred to Harper’s truancy.

“It was the first time we had had a chance to see Prime Minister Harper in quite a while,” he said, after a session Harper attended. “We don’t see him very often in the House of Commons.”

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