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Monday June
8,
2009 BACK NEXT
While
we’ve all known it for a long time, two events in the last few weeks
remind us that if the respect Canadians have for politicians is very
low, the politicians have nobody to blame but themselves
too. Take
controversies involving Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla and Natural Resources
Minister Lisa Raitt, for example. In
both cases, their fellow federal politicians, regardless of
political stripes, led the feeding frenzy to help media discredit
their colleagues even before looking at the facts (in the case of
Dhalla) and even after (in the case of Raitt). Lately
they are using their committees not as a tool to promote fairness
and a place to defend the interests of all Canadians, but as a
modern- day kangaroo court to pillory and to expose their new
enemies or to get even with the old ones. What happened in these
committees in the last few years is disgraceful on both sides of the
House. I
remember what they did to the former commissioner George Radwanski,
an individual with an impressive professional record who might have
made some mistakes (who doesn’t?) but who was summarily ‘executed’
in a public square because he was caught in a crossfire between the
feuding squads close to Paul Martin and Jean
Chrétien. Then
we had to stomach last year’s committee show starring Brian Mulroney
and Karlheinz Schreiber when politicians were again out for blood
and not justice. Liberal
MP Ruby Dhalla was dragged before the House Immigration Committee
only a few weeks ago to be pilloried by her
colleagues. Dhalla
defended herself with dignity and grace and she should be reinstated
as soon as possible as Liberal critic for
multiculturalism. Last
week, our bloodthirsty politicians found another victim: Raitt. Her
big sin was that some not-so-sensitive documents were left in CTV’s
Parliament Hill news bureau studio after an
interview. The
files were in the hands of an assistant who was supposed to take
them back with her at the end of the interview. She did not. What
was the minister supposed to do? Before leaving the studio, was she
supposed to tell the assistant, “By the way, don’t forget the
confidential documents in the CTV studio?” Trying to compare this
case with the one involving former minister of foreign affairs
Maxime Bernier is preposterous. In that case, it was the minister
who had the documents in his hands and he was the one who forgot
them in his girlfriend’s house. This
case is completely different and the minister had no reason to
believe that the documents were left behind. It
was an honest mistake and all could have been resolved with a slap
on the wrist, especially since the documents were not that
sensitive. However,
if someone was supposed to resign, it was the assistant, not the
minister. Question
Period antics, with opposition parties barking at the minister
preaching loyalty and professionalism, was the most hypocritical
thing they could have done. The
opposition said there is nothing noble in firing an assistant to
cover for the minister’s mistake. I
believe that there is nothing noble in twisting the facts, either.
It was the opposition who were trying to fire the minister for a
benign mistake made by the assistant. It’s
not the minister’s fault the assistant lost her job, rather it’s the
fault of those who try to score political points by taking advantage
of an honest mistake of a young assistant. Fact
is, federal politicians were looking for a scandal, CTV was looking
for a scoop, and a young assistant lost her job. Of course, they’re
not happy with the outcome, but not because the assistant lost her
job. They’re unhappy because they failed to score points and the
minister is still, rightly, there. And
they wonder why people don’t like politics? If they want respect
form Canadians, they should start having respect for themselves
first.
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