Question and answer

I'll note off the top that I'm sympathetic to David Akin's conundrum in trying to develop questions for a short joint interview with Stephen Harper. And indeed nobody seems to have yet tied Akin's explanation to the most significant problem with Harper - being that he doesn't accept enough questions from any source, or answer them meaningfully enough, for anybody to do more than scratch the surface of the range of issues where Canada should be able to get answers out of its Prime Minister.

That said, though, at least some of Akin's explanations seem to be falling short of the mark. For example, here's his commentary on the one question about prorogation asked the next day:

(W)e would very much like to ask the PM more questions about it but, if you read what he said to Mansbridge, what he said to Ivison and me and, what he said to CTV in New Brunswick, you'll see that he's going to say pretty much the same thing -- "as I've said before".

So should we take much from the question of whether Harper claims to be repeating himself? Well, guess which interview contains the following statements from Harper:

As you know...I don't think we've been secret about that...as I did say yesterday...Since I just said...I've said...we know we to work in that context and we will continue to try to do so...our approach has been very clear. We've been very clear on what our targets are and also very clear that we're looking to implement these in a continental framework...we've been very clear...As you know...

So the fact that Harper states that he's repeating himself probably isn't the best measure of whether a question is worth asking - both because Harper has every incentive to pretend he's being consistent even when he's not, and because statements along the lines of "as you know" seem to be a regular verbal crutch for Harper.

Once again, though, the bigger issue is the fact that journalists and MPs alike receive so little opportunity to question Harper that they're forced to choose between asking a single followup question on abuses of democracy and dealing with vital policy issues like climate change and Afghanistan - and can't count on any content in the answers either way.

(Edit: fixed wording.)