Will the Harperites Make the NDP Swear an Oath of Allegiance?

Jean Chrétien has recently weighed in on the NDP's stance on national unity.

Former prime minister Jean Chretien says he's disturbed by the NDP's "ambiguity" on national unity and its willingness to resurrect the debate over the Constitution.
He was referring to an NDP caucus that suddenly includes sympathizers of Quebec independence and is the first pan-Canadian party to oppose the Clarity Act, Chretien's landmark law which sets rules for a future referendum.

"Obviously, there's some ambiguity and I see they've started to talk about the Constitution again since the election," Chretien said during a visit to Quebec City. "I said in 1993: 'If you want to talk about the Constitution, vote against me because I won't go there. There are other problems than that."'

When he mentioned 1993, I remembered something from that time.

It was the year that Harper's Reform Party and the Bloc, made election history, with the Reformers winning 52 seats, and the Bloc, 54, to become the official opposition.

Reformers had taken a tough stand with Quebec, and had joined forces with the Alliance for the Preservation of English, to challenge bilingualism.

Things became charged when members of APEC set fired to a Quebec flag in Brockville.

“On a platform behind the train station, a Quebec flag was spread out. About half a dozen demonstrators took turns stomping and spitting on the Fleur-de-lis before it was set ablaze.”(Ottawa Citizen, October 19, 1992)

And for a bit of trivia, one of Harper's new senators, Bob Runciman, was a supporter.

“The Brockville chapter of APEC successfully opposed a petition to introduce French immersion classes in the Leeds and Grenville school district; not that the school board really needed prodding from APEC to turn down French immersion. Bob Runciman, the local MPP, supports APEC and has addressed a meeting of its Brockville chapter.” (Kingston Whig-Standard, July 11 1987)

“Runciman has apparently helped whip up the anti-bilingualism sentiment in the area, and [APEC] members claimed 1,400 people have joined the cause in Brockville and 10,000 across the province.” (The Toronto Star, Aug 16 1987)

But I digress.

In the piece on Chretien, it states that: 'The NDP stance would seem to be at odds with the Clarity Act, which calls for a clear majority for sovereigntists before Ottawa would entertain negotiations to break up the country.'

However, as I've mentioned several times, Jack Layton actually campaigned in 2004, on a promise to repeal the Clarity Act.

So back to my original question and the 1993 election results.

Several Reform Party MPs suggested that since the Bloc was a separatist party, their MPs should be forced to pledge allegiance to Canada. (video below) They also liberally threw out words like "treason", not unlike the insane rantings during the 2008 coalition crisis.

So given the fact that the NDP now has 59 MPs from Quebec, several of whom are also "separatists", with the leader vowing to scrap the Clarity Act, will the Reformers in the House, of which there are many (including the prime minister), demand that they pledge an Oath of Allegiance?

It would be no crazier today than it was in 1993. (and yes, this is tongue in cheek)

Conservative Senators Prove They Can Steal Like Conservative MPs

When Bob Runciman was in Mike Harris's cabinet in Ontario, he got into trouble for releasing the name of a young offender. After much public backlash Harris was forced to demote him, though only temporarily.

He has been part of the neoconservative Reform movement for some time. A former member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English, the group that burned and stomped on a Quebec flag in Brockville, because of bilingualism, he is clearly a devotee.

So learning that he has been abusing our tax dollars to campaign for his party should not come as a surprise.

Is this the first time he's done it, or the first time he got caught?

And he says that the party itself gave him his instructions, after already being in trouble for wasting so many of our tax dollars on this practice.

When is it going to end?

Conservative Senators are quietly using taxpayer-funded literature to target opposition ridings with a partisan crime message as the party gears up for the next election, the Toronto Star has learned. And at least one of the Senators sent the mailers out at the direction of the Conservative Party of Canada’s national campaign office.

That Senator was Bob Runciman (Ontario). It is not clear whether Senator Don Plett (Manitoba), who distributed almost identical material, did so at the behest of the party. The tactic of Senators using their office budgets to demonize Liberal MPs in their own ridings is unheard of and an affront to the Senate’s role as a chamber of sober second thought, Liberal Senator Jim Munson, said in an interview.

So many things are unheard of with this government. We've never seen anything like it.

[Anita] Neville also said that the Senators’ “tough on crime” message was hard to take seriously, since Prime Minister Stephen Harper killed 18 justice bills – virtually his entire law and order agenda –when he prorogued Parliament for the third time last January. “These mailings are another example of why the Conservatives are the biggest-borrowing, biggest-spending government in Canadian history ... In their mind, taxpayers’ money means free money that they can waste as they please ...

This Harper crony must resign.