Being Speaker isn't easy — and it just got a lot harder

The address to a joint session of the House of Commons and Senate last week by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was among the most solemn and poignant moments in the history of Parliament.

Everything since then has been anything but.

When the House convened on Wednesday afternoon for question period, the proceedings began with Deputy Speaker Chris D'Entremont — occupying the chair in Anthony Rota's absence — beseeching MPs to conduct themselves with decorum. A day earlier, the deputy leader of the Official Opposition had called the Government House leader a "disgrace" and the Liberals had demanded an apology.

"I would suggest to the House that it is incumbent on all members to bolster their efforts in being respectful and courteous in their interventions," D'Entremont delicately suggested.

If nothing else, the House got through the next 45 minutes without anyone calling anyone else a "disgrace."

The Conservatives had been demanding that the prime minister apologize for the fact that Rota's honoured guest last Friday — Yaroslav Hunka, who turned out to be a former member of a volunteer unit in Hitler's forces — had caused such embarrassment and offence.

And shortly before question period, the prime minister stood before the cameras outside the chamber and expressed "how deeply sorry Canada is for the situation this put President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian delegation in."

Once question period began, Trudeau stood in the Commons and offered his "unreserved" apology "on behalf of all of us in this House."

This was somewhat awkward. The prime minister can apologize on behalf of the government of Canada, or on behalf of the country itself, but it's not really for him to apologize on behalf of MPs.

But it was an apology.

The Conservatives were still unsatisfied. The Official Opposition wanted Trudeau to apologize not on behalf of everyone, but for what they said was his "personal responsibility" for Hunka's presence in the visitors' galleries.

Rota already has said that the decision to invite Hunka, a constituent, was his and his alone. And the Speaker's office has said that no guest list was ever shared with the Prime Minister's Office. In fact, according to the office, no guest list is ever shared with the government.

But from the moment it became clear who Rota had invited, the Conservatives have been enthusiastically committed to the idea that it was somehow Trudeau's fault. And they have pursued a couple of theories in hopes of making that case.

One theory rests on the fact that the director of the Parliamentary Protective Service — the force entrusted with the security of the parliamentary precinct — is a member of the RCMP who reports on operational matters to the commissioner of the RCMP (who ultimately reports to the minister of public safety, who reports to the prime minister).