I don't know if they think these ridiculous tactics will work, but I can't believe the horrendous display that Tim Hudak and his gang of misfits are putting on in the Ontario Legislature. Who does he think he is? Mike Harris?
If I ever contemplated voting PC in Ontario again, the actions of these thugs would convince me not to even consider it. They are Reformers to the bone. Hudak used to belong to a group called "Canadians for George Bush". Enough said.
Coyle: Disgraceful show put on by PC caucus
By Jim Coyle Queen's Park
December ,2 2009
There are two lines that appear in most speeches by Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak. Among the values he purports to cherish are "respect for the rule of law." When he talks about his immigrant grandparents, he extols those who "play by the rules."
This week, as Hudak led his caucus in a disgraceful show of contempt for the Legislature and its rules, those words were revealed for empty rhetorical boiler-plate.
Heir, as he is, to the legacy of former premier Mike Harris, it's unsettling to many to imagine what a Tim Hudak Ontario might look like – especially since a Hudak PC caucus looks like something right out of Trailer Park Boys, an outfit where yahoos rule and where rules, when inconvenient, are to be defied and mocked.
This week, Hudak did himself considerable harm. He let his party be defined by its least credible and most ridiculous MPPs – bumptious contrarian Bill Murdoch from Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, and renegade libertarian from eastern Ontario, Randy Hillier.
The PC need for growth in urban Ontario will hardly be aided by the antics of those two smirking loudmouths, as pleased with their disruptive antics as a couple of adolescent spitball throwers.
Given the wide support already on the record for tax harmonization from Ontario PCs, the caucus's outrage about the Liberal government's proposed harmonized sales tax has always been opportunistic and contrived. This week, it bordered on the obscene.
Reporters were told ahead of time that Murdoch was going to put on a show. Dressed in a kilt, he stood Monday in the Legislature and pointedly called Premier Dalton McGuinty "a liar."
This, he knew, violated rules. Asked three times to withdraw the remark, he refused. He was expelled from the Legislature, but refused to leave. Then, he was quickly surrounded by caucus-mates and the standoff was on.
Both Murdoch and Hillier were expelled indefinitely by Speaker Steve Peters for continuing to defy his rulings. But the two Gong Show refugees carried on. They occupied seats not their own and defiled them, roaring spittle-flecked insults at the government.
Frankly, it's hard to imagine an image less likely to help Hudak in the longer term than that presented to Ontario by two rural, middle-aged tantrum artists as they defied the Speaker and the rules.
It's no great victory for Hudak that his PC party now wears the flushed and foolish faces of Bill Murdoch and Randy Hillier.
They were faces of raving irrationality that any woman abused by her mate would recognize. They were faces of incoherent fulminating that any child terrified by a drunken father would know. They were the faces of inane intransigence with which most beat cops are wearily familiar.
It was conduct of a sort Hudak would surely have denounced were it a student defying a teacher or a defendant defying a judge. It was evident by the body language of some PC MPPs that they were uncomfortable. Still they went along.
So shame on Christine Elliott and Sylvia Jones for letting the biggest bozos in their number rule the day.
Shame on Ted Arnott and Elizabeth Witmer for participating in the debasement of an institution in which they have worked honourably for decades.
Shame on elder statesmen Norm Sterling and Bob Runciman for demeaning a Legislature to which they will utter sentimental paeans in the retirement speeches in their not-too-distant futures.
And, most of all, shame on Tim Hudak, who, if his grandparents did put great stock in playing by the rules, can be no credit to them.
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