Where we need MPS to be
Breaking news: “The Trudeau government announced, following the grim revelations about long-term care in Canada, that Parliament will be recalled in a special emergency session to deal with the scandal of abuse and neglect of its elderly citizens. ‘Parliament must weigh in,’ said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, ‘on the savage neglect of its old people. Thousands of our seniors have been abused, neglected and died. Parliament must explore this national shame.’ ” Except that didn’t happen.
T hat ’ s what ever yone should have been reading Wednesday morning. What was the headline you were reading? Trudeau and Singh make deal to neuter Parliament till Sept. 21.
First, great thanks to the Canadian military for being swift and direct and effective in declaring what they saw in nursing homes. Thank God they are not “suspended” until September. There is honour left in at least one Canadian institution.
Second, we have the information now on Ontario’s LTC. Quebec’s came next, and it has its alarms, too. Third, it will be a real shock if in the rest of the provinces and the territories there is not some variant of this utter scandal in the treatment of the old. Premiers have a massive responsibility. But let us not have the “jurisdictional” question cloud what is a general and national shame.
It may not be the biggest scandal we have seen, but it is surely, in the root sense of the word, the most pathetic. In other words the one that most wounds our hearts. Those who have lived the longest, and by some measure contributed the most, are the most abused. This is a matter for the national conscience.
Therefore, it is really far past time that the gutting and sidelining of Canada’s Parliament, the castration of the House of Commons, during what is now a double crisis — COVID- 19, and the care of the elderly — be blasted and condemned for the shameless and cowardly abdication of debate and accountability that it is.
Mr. Trudeau has been indoors in a cottage for 50-plus days. His morning stand-ups under the Tent of Commons have passed the tedious stage, passed dreary, passed repetitive, clichéd and annoying. They are as useless as they are arrogant. And that’s a high bar on both. One person, even a PM, is not a government. Trudeau is either scared of the House of Commons, or he has no regard for it. Perhaps it’s both.
The prime minister is not acting as a prime minister should, or should be allowed to. He has not the right to end the deliberative and accountability functions of Parliament.
So it has come to pass that this most pathetic scandal will not be debated on Thursday or Friday or next week, just as over the past 50 plus days Canada has not had a real government during the biggest health and financial crisis in modern times. That’s scandal on top of scandal. Utterly reprehensible and contemptible.
Jagmeet Singh, who deserves some sort of medal for inconspicuousness, being a no- show during most of this time, should be fully ashamed of himself, that for a paltry political boost for his party ( the sick- leave handouts) he gave Trudeau immunity from Parliament, from question period, from due democratic process. It would be a real service were someone to explain to him what the phrase “opposition party” implies. It surely does not mean “subdivision of the minority administration.”
The NDP, long long ago, used to wear the brand of “the conscience of Parliament.” Singh should put a “stop order” on any T- shirts daring to wear that slogan again. In the old days, half the NDP would be right now talking to relatives of those caught in the LTC outrage, and the other half would be nailing whoever was prime minister for being “out of service.”
The question is: Are we a country, or are we not? A country has a Parliament. It has representatives from every district in the country who meet and debate. It sounds national themes. It gives national responses. It cannot shrink to a twomonth solo performance in front of a complacent handful of press, and the daily iteration of “we have your back.” That is not a country. It is a sideshow.
Do we have a true national voice on matters of the highest national consequence, or not? Obviously not.
The minority in power has opened the sluices on the greatest spending binge in our history, at the precise moment our national economy is, perhaps since the Great Depression itself, at its most feeble, its weakest, its most precarious.
The greatest spending in the weakest economy, mil
If you don’t want to be in the House of Commons, then resign.
lions in emergency relief, businesses by the thousands almost certainly to fail. And somehow this paradox of a closed Commons during a woesome crisis wears on without a bleep.
Why are the individual MPS of every party, the Liberal MPS especially, not asserting their privilege as MPS, as representatives of the people, calling attention to this deplorable neutering of their responsibilities?
Is the PMO our new form of government? Are the aides and spin masters all we need? MPS step up. Especially after what has been so tragically learned in the past few days about how Canada’s elderly have been and are being forgotten, abused, and in many cases, dying.
Here’s the rule to follow: If you don’t want to be in the House of Commons, then resign from it. Imitate the military. Show some honour. This rule should apply to all 338.
Here’s the shorter version: Get back or get out.