Apparently four-letter words are more disturbing to many than the Harper government's drastic interference with Canada's democratic process.
A few weeks ago, NDP MP Pat Martin swore loudly and publicly at the Harper government’s efforts to shut down the debate of a budget bill. This week in Parliament, Liberal MP Justin Trudeau swore at Environment Minister Peter Kent for his jibe at NDP environment critic Megan Leslie because she did not attend the Durban conference on climate change – never mind the fact that the Harper government had refused accreditation to anyone not belonging to its own delegation. Trudeau was forced to apologize; Martin had to defend himself over and over again in the national media. Apparently four-letter words are more disturbing to many than the drastic interference with the democratic process in this country at the hands of Harper and his band of ideologues. I believe in personal civilities, but not if larger decencies are to be lost as a result.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “obscene” as something “highly offensive or repugnant.” If I’m not particularly fond of schoolboy language being used in parliamentary exchange, I am entirely affronted by the indecencies of majority rule in Ottawa these days. It is obscene that the Conservatives would ignore the ruling of a federal court judge and proceed to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board; it is obscene that they would insist on destroying gun-registry records when Quebec is going to court to ask for those records; it is obscene that, as Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson reports, a Conservative MP would demand a judge appear before a “witch-hunt committee” to explain his ruling that criticized the committee; it is obscene that the Conservatives are ramming an omnibus crime bill through Parliament that is contrary to all evidence that more jails breed more criminals; it is obscene that Canada is a pariah in world-wide discussions of climate change and refuses to rein in big carbon interests; it is obscene to imply that Jewish MP Irwin Cotler is a weak supporter of Israel because he does not always agree with the Harper government’s constant approval of Israeli policy; it is obscene that when a majority of voters do not support Stephen Harper and his policies, the Conservatives consistently impose closure to shut down discussion of issues in Parliament.
For all the good he did, Kent might as well have not been in Durban himself. The Conservatives could have sent a parrot at much less cost – Oh! Is it offensive that I have compared our Environment Minister to a feathered mimic? Mimic is what Conservative MPs do when they toe the party line, which is essentially that they and their colleagues can do no wrong. Need a quick helicopter exit from your fishing camp or an expensive hotel room near a Munich conference? Well go ahead, but don’t ever admit that you might have gone by boat or slummed in a lesser room for $500 a night and saved some of that precious taxpayer money about which you’re ostensibly so concerned. Add on the hypocrisy in Kent’s suggestion that Megan Leslie did not care enough about matters of the environment to go to South Africa, and the sad absurdity of his promise that Canada would not withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol while the Durban conference was ongoing, when he intended to pull out immediately after.
There need to be new obscenity laws in Canada, and they need to take into account not just what’s being said in Parliament, but also what’s being done in the sullied name of parliamentary democracy in Canada. Such laws should be defined in the court of public opinion before any more parrot-droppings hit the national fan.
Origin
Source: the Mark
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