The Conservatives held a photo opportunity in downtown Ottawa on Thursday. It was held in a nondescript building, on the seventh floor, in a room without a view.

This room we were told, was where Liberal and Conservative members of the Employment Insurance working group was to meet.

There was a round table, six chairs, some binders with Employment Insurance on the cover. Coffee, tea (Indian Night Decaf Black Vanilla!) and cold water were available as well. Most importantly, there was a gold-fringed Canadian flag in the corner.

The only trouble was that the Liberal members of the group walked away from the talks earlier this week. The Liberals said the Conservatives treated the whole process as a "charade."

In came the Conservative members of the panel: Human Resources Minister Diane Finley and the Pierre Poilievre, the prime minister's parliamentary secretary. The third Conservative group member, Malcolm Brown, the senior assistant deputy minister for Human Resources, was nowhere to be seen.

"Ready to get to work?" asked Poilievre.

"Absolutely," replied Finley.

"That's what we are here for," added Poilievre.

"We're making sure people realize that we are hard at work for Canadians, as opposed to Michael Ignatieff who is just in it for himself, right?" said Finley.

Asked by a reporter if they had ever been in the room before, Finley and Poilievre said, "Yes, this is where they all [the meetings] have been held."

"Allright! Time to get to work!" said Poilievre, at the round table he later dubbed, "The Table of Co-operation."

Their handlers then announced the photo opportunity over and ushered everyone out the door.

Chris Rands