There ought to be a law. In fact, there has to be. We cannot continue to allow these disrespectful scoffers to ridicule our parliamentary system of government. And that is exactly what Stephen Harper and his henchmen are doing. They are dragging the Parliament of Canada in the mud.
And they are doing it to both Houses of Parliament. The current problems of the Senate can only be laid on the doorstep of the Prime Minister. Until Mr. Harper started his wholesale dumping of Conservative hacks into the Senate, it was quietly doing the job that Senators are paid to do. Whether you agree with having a Senate or not, these men and women were providing a House of sober second thought. The problem was that Mr. Harper did not want that sober thinking on his government’s bills.
While setting a record for the highest number of Senate appointments by a single Prime Minister, Harper scraped the bottom of some unusual barrels. Not all his appointed Senators could be described as honourable ladies and gentlemen. They seemed to have an entitlement problem. And then, to make matters worse, the erstwhile plumbers in the Prime Minister’s Office got involved.
Meanwhile back in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister became tired of all the knitty-picky questions in Question Period from those people on the other side of the chamber. These people were actually inferring that he had serious memory problems. This was not only annoying to him but he was becoming concerned that he might have made an occasional slip in his answers. He needed a new answering machine.
Since Mr. Harper’s pet question answerer Dean Del Mastro from Peterborough was charged with falsifying election documents, he had to resign as the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Secretary and as a member of the Conservative Caucus. Mr. Harper misses him. He replaced Dean Del Mastro with a back bencher from Oak Ridges-Markham by the name of Paul Calandra. In his new position, Mr. Calandra is not making friends for the Conservative Party of Canada.
Probably the best way to explain what Mr. Calandra is doing is that he is disgracing his party leader, he is disgracing his political party and he is an embarrassment to all Members of Parliament. While the Speaker of the House of Commons has the power to censure Mr. Calandra for his antics, he has failed to do his job. Mr. Calandra stands up and talks about things totally unrelated to the question. Even if he is dyslexic, there is no excuse for him to be speaking on inane subjects on behalf of the Prime Minister.
In the meantime, Mr. Harper is hiding from his Parliamentary responsibilities. Obviously only the voters can censure him.
-30-
Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]