... Wait, how do you think this works? "I'm going to bring in a visitor, can everyone in parliament please give them the thumbs-up"? I mean, arguably it _should_ work like that, because "parliamentarian shows off someone who turns out to be a milkshake duck" does seem to be a recurring thing, but it is very much not how it works.
"Ms Freeland, you are a lifelong expert in Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian history and politics, I'd love it if you looked over this list."
or
"Mr Speaker, I hear you're putting together a set of speakers for Mr Zelensky's visit, it would be great if you would share that set with me, as I have a special focus on this area"
I'm sorry, I don't see the confusion here. Unless you think that would be partisan interference with parliamentary procedure?
Putting it another way, if she was my MP I'd be pissed. Because she's not "just" the deputy PM & finance minister, she's an MP in the Canadian parliament in the governing party, and this has been one of her lifelong areas of study, and I would expect her to be applying her expertise on the public's behalf, because that's how she got voted in.
Yeah, it would have been good if the speaker had done that. However:
> He identified Hunka as a "war hero" who fought for the First Ukrainian Division
The speaker evidently did not think to so much as Google "First Ukrainian Division" (which would have made the nature of the situation clear) so it's... optimistic to assume that he'd think to check with an expert.
> "Mr Speaker, I hear you're putting together a set of speakers for Mr Zelensky's visit, it would be great if you would share that set with me, as I have a special focus on this area"
This probably wasn't even realistically on her radar; she's the _Minister for Finance_, which is, like, an actual job which requires a lot of work. Organising events like this is for backbenchers, and, apparently, speakers. Like, if she'd been chatting to the speaker at the coffee machine and he'd mentioned who he was inviting, I assume she'd have gone "wait, you're inviting a member of _what_?!", but it's not clear how you expect her to even have known about it otherwise.
