The Speaker chooses recrimination
Is it right for Pierre Poilievre to throw the charge of racism in Justin Trudeau’s (black)face?
“(The Prime Minister) spent the first half of his adult life as a practising racist, dressing up in hideous racist costumes so many times he can’t remember,” Poilievre said of Trudeau on Tuesday during Question Period.
That was in response to the prime minister accusing Poilievre of “actively courting the support of groups with white nationalist views.”
The exchange was unseemly, as is sadly customary for the House of Commons. Yet if Trudeau accuses Poilievre of being a racist-by-association, then it seems fair game to observe that Trudeau enjoyed wearing blackface.
The blackface business clearly flummoxed the hapless Speaker of the House, Greg Fergus. He managed to remain motionless and flailing at the same time; his face was stern but his legs were jelly. He threw out one Conservative MP for a remark that she had withdrawn, and then threw out Poilievre himself, not for the blackface reference but for saying that employing “wacko policies” made Trudeau a “wacko prime minister.”
Earlier, Trudeau had called Poilievre “spineless” but Fergus demurred to demur on that, allowing Trudeau to rephrase. Walter Bagehot himself would have marvelled that the Westminster tradition could draw such a precise line between tolerable and intolerable epithets. Parliamentary historians await future developments. Would “spineless wacko” have passed muster before the mace?
So painful was the Speaker’s pretence of presiding over Parliament that former NDP leader Tom Mulcair said that the Speaker should put himself out of his own partisan misery and resign.
I suspect the Speaker was destabilized because he found the blackface reference distasteful, and somehow unfair. The Speaker doesn’t think the prime minister a racist and Poilievre doesn’t either — hence the reference to the “first half” of his adult life.
When the blackface revelations surfaced in the 2019 election campaign, Trudeau was contrite. He called in Jagmeet Singh, future Robin (or butler?) to Trudeau’s Batman, to grant him absolution on the black costumery. The people voted. The plurality went for Andrew Scheer, but Trudeau won a minority.
Speaking of Singh, Beauchesne’s Rules & Forms of the House of Commons of Canada (1989) deems it unparliamentary to refer to an MP as “a servile follower of the government.” Will Fergus expel the next member who calls Singh that, even if it is a Liberal who intends it as a compliment?
How then to speak about Trudeau’s blackface? Is it simply uncouth to bring it up? Is it out-of-bounds? Should shameful behaviour from the past be left in the past if confessed?
Would it be legitimate for Poilievre to campaign against Trudeau with blackface references? Would that be a step too far, as when Donald Trump arrived to debate Hillary Clinton with several of the women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct?
The impact on partisan politics is more visible, but also more trivial. Broader questions of dealing with dark periods in the past are critical to our capacity to make sound historical judgments.
A culture in which contrition and forgiveness are not possible is one which cuts itself off from the path of reconciliation. Such a culture only offers two options — denial or recriminations. Both make the past a prison from which escape becomes difficult.
The prime minister tends toward the recrimination camp, hence his view that Canada is a “genocidal” country, and that various figures of the past ought to be vigorously denounced today. There can be no doubt that had it been Poilievre who had sported the blackface, no other topic would ever be discussed in the House of Commons.
WOULD ‘SPINELESS WACKO’ HAVE PASSED MUSTER BEFORE THE MACE?
The recrimination view of history goes together with the denial approach. That’s why this week’s fireworks started with Trudeau demanding Poilievre denounce — deny any association with — a white nationalist group few even know exists. The only way to avoid recriminations is to deny the offence.
Trudeau himself applies denial when he seeks to avoid recriminations for former Liberal prime ministers, from Wilfrid Laurier to Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien. Residential schools are simply not to be discussed in relation to the former; it is effectively denied that he had anything to do with the policy. Similarly, the infamous 1969 White Paper on the assimilation of Indigenous peoples is not to be held against the latter two.
From the White Paper to blackface, it would be better for Trudeau if contrition and forgiveness were possible. After all, the father withdrew the White Paper, and the son has traded in blackface for Bollywood as the sartorial style of his premiership. Unwilling though as he is to extend the same possibility to others, he can hardly claim it for himself.
Without contrition and forgiveness, what is left? Dredging up the past for mud that will stick to others when hurled, or, in the case of blackface, carefully and comprehensively applied?
The Speaker’s floundering about this week was about that in microcosm. A larger spirit would have permitted the two MPS to withdraw their remarks in their own fashion. But he insisted instead upon recriminations.