At one point in time, Question Period in Canada actually meant something besides political posturing. There was a gentleman's agreement that opposition party members who desired a serious answer would slip the appropriate minister the question a day ahead of time so they could hopefully achieve a considered response.
Personal story here that Burnaby49 would appreciate. From the early 1960's until the 1980's almost all beer in Canada was sold in a standard bottle known as the stubby. Incredibly strong, recyclable almost forever it seemed, and simplified logistics since every brewery used the same bottle so a returned bottle could come from wherever.
https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/beer- ... 20%20times.
Then in the early 1970's came a product known as Heidelberg Ale which had as a marketing gimmick the "keg bottle":
http://www.beeretseq.com/canadian-super-premiums/
A close family member was told by his minister at 11:00 that a question would be asked about that particular bottle that day (4:00 pm) and he needed a response. Rapid phone calls to Ontario Brewers Retail, the brewery, an afternoon spent crawling bars in downtown Toronto, and a hastily written note passed to the minister while the house was in session that the answer to the question should be to ban the bottle for environmental reasons since they were generally an all around pain in the butt and too many of them were being thrown out rather than recycled and the extra logistics burned too much fuel.