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reimagining suburbia

Friday, September 19, 2008

Friday Mocumentory

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1 comment:

hibou said...

Even Conservative supporter Randall Denley is not big on Pierre: "I used to think he was a pretty smart kid who, despite a tendency to be a hyper-partisan self-promoter, would eventually grow into his responsibilities. His recent actions have caused me to rethink that assessment. Poilievre's statements about native residential schools this week were appalling in their content and horrendous in their timing. His party, and voters in Nepean-Carleton, should be asking if he's fit to hold public office. As a constituent, I would say no.

On the same day that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was delivering an historic apology for decades of mistreatment native Canadians suffered in residential schools, Poilievre was flapping his gums on talk radio, referring to people who "partook" in the native residential schools. Partook? These kids were forcibly removed from their families. After misstating the costs associated with the settlement by a mere $2.1 billion, Poilievre wondered if the public was really getting value for money.

"My view is that we need to engender the values of hard work and independence and self-reliance," the MP said. Not to say that our native people don't have those values. Not in so many words, anyway. It's always interesting to see a politician lecture people on the virtues of hard work and self-reliance when he is sucking on the public teat for more than $150,000 a year.

There are legitimate issues about the usefulness of the $10 billion a year our federal government spends on aboriginal people. It is a lot of money and the people who are supposed to benefit aren't getting results in proportion to the cost. But that has nothing to do with the residential schools issue.

Harper's apology was partly atonement for inexcusable behaviour by government and the organizations that ran these schools, partly a fairly inexpensive way to wrap up the legal liability. People who "partook" of the residential schools are eligible for a $10,000 lump sum and $3,000 for every year they attended. Considering that they were taken from their families, subjected to cultural assimilation and, in some cases, sexual abuse, that's value for money. Even in Pierre Poilievre's world.

Poilievre recanted the next day, telling the House of Commons that his remarks were "hurtful and wrong." No argument there, but how could he not have known that when he was saying them? On the bright side, Poilievre went from relative obscurity to a national profile all in one day. Quite an accomplishment.

This isn't the first time Poilievre has put his foot in his mouth. Last month, he was complaining about what he called "the McGuinty sex-change program." The provincial government had agreed to cover the costs of that surgery for the eight or 10 people a year who want it. That's no business of Poilievre's and the people who would benefit are obviously in a pretty troubling position. Poilievre still thought it worth giving them a kick because it was a chance to criticize something done by a Liberal.

Last fall, Poilievre was busy playing his "tough on crime" card and launching a petition drive to pressure the Senate to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16. The bill had already been passed by the Commons at the time. Back in 2006, Poilievre was chastised for uttering an obscenity during a Commons committee hearing. He denied it, then later admitted it.

You can see from his website, www.resultsforyou.ca, that Poilievre is a great self-promoter. That's not exactly unusual for a politician, but this MP is relentless. His efforts have not gone unnoticed on the Hill. A survey of political staffers by the publication The Hill Times awarded Poilievre top spot as the biggest gossip on the Hill and he tied for first as the biggest self-promoter.

Curiously, Poilievre also came in tops in his party for his work as a constituency MP. It's difficult to think what he has accomplished, although he regularly sends out householders that are one step above a comic book in their sophistication. It sounded as if he had really gotten something for his riding when he announced $35 million to help build the Strandherd-Armstrong bridge. Then city politicians found out Poilievre was just recycling money already promised for transit. The MP did get a cheap rent extension from the NCC for the Queensway-Carleton Hospital, but the whole threat of a big rent hike was a bogus issue he had drummed up in the first place.

In all, Poilievre's record ought to make Nepean-Carleton voters ashamed. The message from his residential schools comments and his shot about sex changes is that people in his riding are a bunch of red-neck bigots who have to be pandered to. Next election, let's show him that he's wrong.

September 22, 2008 at 6:22 AM

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