I had a sense that there was the word going out this week to raise little bubbles of discredit of the legislative process when young Tory Stephen Taylor¹ put out the message “did you know that 15 minutes in the House of Commons costs the taxpayer $75,000?” Makes sense. Dad’s out of town. Juniors have to be kept in line. With performances like these, well, he may be right:
“Yesterday the government could not tell us why it erected an expensive sign in Gatineau to advertise the installation of another sign,” Nova Scotia MP Mike Savage said. “In Yellowknife, another Conservative sign has been bought to advertise the installation of ‘interior-exterior signs.’ Signs, signs, everywhere a sign.” Mr. Savage wanted to know why the government is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on signs when more and more Canadians are using food banks. Transport Minister Baird characterized these signs as “signs of hope”, and signs of opportunity.
You get used to this stuff when it continues for long enough. But it grates and it wears. Look to the voice of reason when it can be heard, like that of Canada’s favorite alt-country politician, Chuck Angus, who spoke out against Twitter in committee on Tuesday:
Mr. Speaker, I am sorry, but this is not a clown show. We are elected to represent our people. We go to committee to do serious business. I believe the issue of members sitting on committee with their inane Twitters about what happens at committee demeans the work of all parliamentarians. I am not going to speak on this party or that party. We have an obligation to represent the best of our country and I would like members of Parliament to put the inane little games away and get down to business of serving their constituents.
Now that’s public speaking. He was building upon his rebuke of the Liberals on Monday:
Mr. Speaker, I always listen with great interest to my hon. colleague, but I think we need to back up a little to see where the Liberal Party has been. When it came to siding with the Conservatives on stripping pay equity for women, the Liberal Party stood and supported that. When it came to stripping basic environmental protection on Canada’s river ways, the Liberal Party stood with the Conservative Party and supported that. When it came to stripping the fundamental obligations on Kyoto, the Liberal party went along with that. The Liberal Party always looks through the prism, not of a national vision but of how to get back to power. Now we have a situation where the Liberal leader, perhaps he was seeking employment benefits himself, suddenly announced that the Liberals would oppose everything from here on in. The Liberals are opposing changes to EI, which would help unemployed workers. Many in my riding have asked me about supporting it, but the Liberal Party does not support that. The bigger issue is getting the visitor from Harvard elected. Now the Liberals are refusing to support the home renovation tax credit, even though it is out there, because the visitor from Harvard sees this as a path to getting to power. The Liberals have supported the government on everything that is wrong. When it finally has done one or two things right, the Liberals oppose it. I cannot understand their hypocrisy on this.
Now, that’s the voice of someone who is taking the business of the business of the nation seriously. Far clearer and finer a voice than, sadly, we had to put up with from Defense Minister Elmersson MacKay whose idea of oratory is “Mr. Speaker, I think we all know here in the House who is doing the huffing and puffing and hyperventilating and pontificating. It is the member opposite.” Sounds like one of those out guys on the Muppets complaining form the balcony, Statler and Waldorf. Another gem from the man who cursed the language with his personal invention, unCanadian.
¹You know, the…err… blogger who gets to speak “with a senior staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office and another staffer at Public Works” to put together a blog post. As fine a gentleman as ever you will meet. Just hi-jinxy methinks from time to time.
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