It was interesting the other day to watch a news clip of Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae in a scrum in Ottawa. He was actually having trouble describing a Conservative Member of Parliament in civil terms. He almost lost it. He could barely believe what the MP had said to the House. It was Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro. As parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, he answers questions for the Prime Minister without seeming to be too concerned about truth, logic or morality.
Del Mastro, MP for the electoral district of Peterborough in Ontario, seems to have two sets of morality. He has one set that applies to the Liberal Party and the NDP and none for the Conservatives. It must make his life fairly simple.
Del Mastro seems to have no problem standing up in the Hose of Commons and maligning other parties. He complained, for example, that the Liberals had been using a U.S. based call centre. Yet when we find that the Liberals had not used a U.S. firm but it was Del Mastro and other Conservatives who had, he brushes it off as unimportant. He goes further and says that other parties should release their calling lists when a year earlier the Conservatives refused to release theirs.
This is not just a double standard but it comes across as amoral. Raised a Catholic by his Italian immigrant parents, Del Mastro should have a clear understanding of right and wrong. Is it his boss Stephen Harper who absolves him from telling the truth?
Del Mastro’s double standard is a matter for his constituents. It is up to Peterborough voters if they can tolerate an MP who finds it so easy to lie. They are probably just voting for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and could care less about who represents them in Ottawa. Maybe some of them believe that politicians are supposed to lie.
What is frightening about that is that our system of government requires a much higher standard of political morality than we are getting today. If it is a true reflection of our society we must have many very worried sociologists in this country.
Maybe they are worried about the shallowness and the lies people spread through the social networks on the Internet. Yet anyone who has to read business résumés is aware of the lowered standards that business must deal with on an ongoing basis.
But each of us has to decide for ourselves. Will we tolerate lies? Will we accept half truths or do we want our best in politics? If we want our best, we better start joining political parties and demanding it. We have a long way to go.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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