More Conservative Double Standard

Yesterday, when the Conservatives limited debate on the budget, NDP Pat Martin tweeted his frustration with a colorful expletive. He remains unapologetic, as he should.

Why the media is giving this so much attention is beyond me, but the Harperites have certainly managed to take the focus off their budget and onto something that few care about.

The photo above is Conservative MP Daniel Petit, giving the finger in the House of Commons. Pierre Poilievre was also caught making a rude gesture while Peter Milliken was speaking, and launched his own F-Bomb during a Parliamentary Committee meeting.



Evan Solomon had Tom Lukiwski on his program, with Lukiwski suggesting that Martin's language crossed a line. Ah yes, that beacon of propriety:



The full tape is filled with so many F-Bombs I'm surprised that it didn't blow itself up.

Andrew Scheer is looking into a formal punishment, that's how far they are willing to take this.

This government has often turned the House of Commons into an Animal House frat party. From Elizabeth May's book, Losing Confidence:

In one memorable Question Period, the question was about the safety of pet food in response to the tragic incident of poisoned pet food from China. The Conservative backbenchers started barking, "Woof, woof. Bow-wow" ... Heckling has also taken a crueler tone. Sexist taunts are more common. Government MPs have even taken to loud booing of certain Liberal MPs they most dislike, even before a question can be asked. This is particularly the case for women MPs. For a while, whenever Judy Sgro rose to speak, the Conservatives would chant "pizza" in reference to the allegations from a campaign worker that she had violated elections laws by accepting free pizza for her volunteers. Although she was cleared by Elections Canada, chanting "pizza" seems to entertain the Conservatives.

A lot of things entertain the Conservatives.

But they're not necessarily as stupid as their actions often imply.

Where is the media critique of the budget? Most headlines relate to a 140 character tweet.  It makes me so f#$%**% mad!

Jacques Gourde Joins Poilievre and Petit as Dishonourable Members of Parliament

We may have been disgusted with Daniel Petit when he gave the finger in the House of Commons, or with just about everything that Pierre Poilievre does, but Conservative MP Jacques Gourde, showed that he can be just as obnoxious as his colleagues.

Another MP who should have the 'Honourable' removed from his title; he too gave an inappropriate gesture when he found he had nothing intelligent to say.

Soon these guys won't even need talking notes. They can just flip and flap like a goose in heat, to make their point.

MPs fuss over obscene gesture
Obscene gestures in the House of Commons had the Liberals and Tories at each other's throats Wednesday, with the opposition calling for the heads of a pair of MPs for bad behaviour.
CanWest News Service
June 15, 2006

OTTAWA - Obscene gestures in the House of Commons had the Liberals and Tories at each other's throats Wednesday, with the opposition calling for the heads of a pair of MPs for bad behaviour.

The schoolyard-style spat was sparked by rude gestures made by Conservatives Jacques Gourde and Pierre Poilievre during a vote on a motion to protect Canadian dairy products on Tuesday night.

While both MPs later apologized, the Liberals remained miffed, and demanded Prime Minister Steven Harper sanction Gourde and Poilievre who are parliamentary secretaries to the agriculture minister and the Treasury Board president, respectively.

'' these actions were not simply insulting to Parliament, but showed contempt and disrespect for all Canadians in this institution,'' Liberal Leader Bill Graham said.

We've got to start demanding better. We pay them a very good salary and we expect them to act like adults. If they can't do that they need to be removed.

Back to: The Jacques Gourde Story: He Does Better at Pantomime

Daniel Petit and Conservatives Break Promises to Quebec

The 2006 election was a surprise to Quebecers as it brought several Conservative/Reform/Alliance MPs to Parliament.

Of course at the time they weren't aware of the alleged money laundering scheme that could cut short the political careers of several, not that they have much chance in Quebec now anyway. (nothing has been proven in court and won't be until this matter is allowed to be heard in court. The Conservatives still declare they did nothing wrong)

After the horrendous attack on Francophones during the Parliamentary crisis, that further divided the country, I think the bridges have been burned.

But in 2006, they were flying high. Promises made by Stephen Harper in Quebec City, and the naivete of some candidates who really thought that this new Conservative Party was going to clean up government, had an affect on voters willing to give this new party a chance.

What, I won? Quebec City results surprise everyone
The Montreal Gazette
January 25, 2006

Call them accidental Tories.

They are Sylvie Boucher, Daniel Petit and Luc Harvey, three Conservative candidates who were as surprised as anyone Monday night when they overcame strong Bloc Quebecois incumbents to win their Quebec City seats.

"I had a terrific team," Boucher, the new MP of Beauport-Limoilou, said when her win over Bloc MP Christian Simard was confirmed shortly after midnight.

"It consisted of my two daughters and a family friend."

Entering the election campaign, Stephen Harper's Conservatives counted on winning Quebec ridings where star candidates Josee Verner, Lawrence Cannon, Maxime Bernier and Jean-Pierre Blackburn were running. Then, as Tory poll numbers began to rise, they started to talk about a breakthrough in three more ridings south of Quebec City.

That's a best-case scenario of seven wins in Quebec, but someone forgot to tell those casting the ballots. On Monday, they voted in a total of 10 Conservatives.

Two of them - Cannon in Pontiac and Jean-Pierre Blackburn in Jonquiere-Alma - have some experience in government and are probably on their way into the new Harper cabinet. But the others are virtual unknowns outside their ridings, and no one knows what they might say or do in office.

That could represent a risk to Stephen Harper, according to Christian Dufour, a political scientist at the Ecole d'administration publique.

Still, the election of Conservative MPs in traditional Bloc ridings represents a major breakthrough for the Tories and shows Harper's decision to reach out to the province has paid off.

"I don't think they expected to play such a big role in the Canadian victory," Dufour said.

Sure enough, Petit said he realized he might win Charlesbourg-Haute-Saint-Charles only around 3 p.m. on Monday.

The lawyer, who was a Conservative candidate and organizer in the 1980s, was shaking hands with some of his backers outside polling stations when voters he did not know came up to shake his hand.

Petit defeated Richard Marceau, the Bloc's justice critic.

In the 2004 election, Marceau won with 52 per cent of the vote and the Conservative candidate placed third with 16 per cent.

Petit confessed the Conservative Party was shooting for second place in his riding, hoping to make gains from the Bloc and the Liberals. In the end, "we had 1,000 votes more," he noted.

Dufour said one of the Bloc's big mistakes in the campaign was to assume it could roll to victory on the anger over the sponsorship scandal.

Another mistake was to assume the only federalist voters left in Quebec are anglophones. The proof is that the 10 MPs were elected in francophone ridings.

Harvey defeated Bloc incumbent Roger Clavet in Louis-Hebert riding by 103 votes. "I was the last one elected," he said, adding his organization was minor league compared with the Bloc machine.

Harvey is a strategic business planner for a Quebec City financial services boutique. As of Monday night, the new MP had no plans to move to Ottawa. "Tomorrow, I go back to the office," he said. "I have been away and there are some files I absolutely have to deal with." Ultimately, the Conservative performance shows there is still some interest in federalism in Quebec, Dufour said.

"There's a part of the Quebec population that is again playing the Canada game." But he warned that Harper must deliver on his promises. "He has a historic challenge. He is under tight surveillance."

What's interesting is that all three of these 'winners' were involved in the money laundering scheme dubbed the "In and Out", and could face criminal charges when this case is finally allowed to go to court.

But did someone mention promises? It didn't take long for Harper to prove to the people of Quebec City that he was all talk and no action.

When the kangaroo goes, so does the love
Tories under fire for refusing to save Quebec City zoo
John Ivison,
National Post
March 28, 2006

It was one of the prettiest love stories in modern political literature. Stephen Harper went to Quebec City in mid-December and captivated his audience with his vision of an Ottawa that would take Quebec's needs more seriously and a Quebec that would be better-represented in Ottawa. Quebecers were enchanted and the city voted in six Conservatives.

The assumption, at least in English Canada, has been that Quebec City's fervour would persuade other cities across the province to swoon before the Conservatives at the next election -- and so it may prove. But it is not a foregone conclusion and there are signs of tension in the relationship already.

Quebec City's zoo, opened in 1931 and long a symbol of civic pride, is slated to close this Friday and the federal government is getting at least part of the blame. Thousands of Quebecers, including Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, protested the closure outside the zoo at the weekend and the letters page of the local papers have been full of condemnation for politicians of all stripes.

"You are a minority government but you won't be there for long, believe me," wrote one correspondent to Le Soleil, referring to the Harper government. "The population will remember the little interest you brought to our region. Ever since the election, there has been silence, total silence."

The city's federalist mayor, Andree Boucher, has also been critical of Ottawa, saying Conservative MPs must "do what they were elected to do on the issue." Ottawa claims it never committed cash to keep the zoo open, privately pointing out that to do so would prompt a flood of requests from ailing zoos across the country.

The Jardin Zoologique de Quebec is provincially owned and the feds point out that the province has not stepped in with a rescue package. The Prime Minister's Office says it has committed to providing $110-million to help the city celebrate its 400th anniversary in 2008 and is looking at ways of upgrading the city's airport.

"No one expects the government to say yes to everything. Our commitments are clear in Quebec City and the zoo is not one of them," said a spokesman.

All of which would be fair enough, had the Conservative MP for Charlesbourg-Jacques Cartier, Daniel Petit, not pledged 22 million federal dollars to help save the zoo during the election campaign.

The Bloc has leapt on the commitment -- and on statements by Josee Verner, the regional minister -- that she'd like to keep the zoo open. "What is Josee Verner doing now we know it's going to be closed? She's not saying anything," Mr. Duceppe said.

Richard Marceau, the charismatic young Bloc MP whose defeat by Mr. Petit was one of the biggest shocks on election night, said Quebec City is a test case for the Conservatives. "They have almost every seat in the city but if they cannot deliver there, what does it say for the rest of the province they want to win?"

This remains very much a local difficulty for the Conservatives. Mr. Duceppe's tub-thumping is unlikely to deflect him from propping up Mr. Harper's government in the House of Commons, at least until the Quebec provincial election. But it will be a concern to the Prime Minister that such a key electoral battleground has become mired in controversy.

When the first shipping crates carrying away sorry-looking tree kangaroos, lemurs and bearded dragons, hit the evening newscasts, the honeymoon will be officially over.

Back to - The Daniel Petit Story: When Ignorance is Bliss

Daniel Petit is Dishonest, Racist AND Arrogant. Be Still My Heart!

Daniel Petit, the Conservative MP for Charlebourg-Haute-Saint-Charles, Quebec; was one of the candidates allegedly involved in money laundering during the 2005/2006 election campaign. (nothing has been proven in court and won't be until this matter is allowed to be heard in court. The Conservatives still declare they did nothing wrong)

He's a despicable man, who's not only apparently dishonest, but racist, and recently added arrogant to his resume, when he called the people of Quebec illiterate. He just doesn't know when to stop.

Tory MP under fire for language comments about Quebecers
Mike De Souza,

Canwest News Service

March 15, 2009

OTTAWA -- A backbench Tory MP from Quebec City has landed himself in hot water after describing Quebecers as a bunch of "illiterates" when it comes to the English language.

Speaking about education at a parliamentary hearing, Daniel Petit, the Conservative MP for Charlebourg-Haute-Saint-Charles, said that his assessment was based on a comparison with the Alberta school system where he lived in the past. He explained that his four children studied both in Quebec and Alberta, but that the latter province invested more in its education system.
"Whether in elementary or secondary (school), English is practically swept under the rug (in Quebec)," Petit, 60, said last week at the House of Commons official languages committee. "At the university level, it's even worse. We have illiterates of the second language."

But Petit's remarks contradict recent statistics which revealed that French-speaking Quebecers were more likely to be bilingual than their English-speaking counterparts in the rest of Canada. A new research analysis by the Association for Canadian Studies concluded that many francophones are getting enough exposure to their second language in school to propel them to excel in bilingualism in their mid-teen years and after they hit the workforce.

"Whatever (francophones) have learned, however uneven or insufficient their learning is, it seems be enough to push them into a very significant degree of bilingualism, once they've finished school," said Jack Jedwab, executive director of the association, in an interview. "Anglophones in the rest of the country, don't seem to have the opportunity or excitement . . . about learning the other language."

Critics quickly pounced on the gaffe from the Tory MP who has developed a reputation for stirring up controversy.

"It's insulting and offensive toward Quebecers," said Michel Guimond, the parliamentary whip for the Bloc Quebecois. "Once a person calls Quebecers illiterate, regardless of which area (or language), it's totally unacceptable and showing contempt."

Guimond said the remarks also demonstrate the weakness and lack of credibility of the Conservative party in Quebec.

Petit, who is the parliamentary secretary to the justice minister, has previously faced calls for his resignation and was forced to apologize in 2006 for drawing links between school shootings in Montreal and the integration of immigrants in Quebec. He was also chastised by the Bloc last fall for suggesting that the opposition party played a role in recent riots in a suburban neighbourhood of Montreal.

"How do you spell pathetic?" asked Liberal MP Denis Coderre. "Frankly, there have been so many times where that guy showed a lack of judgment and nonsense (that) I don't know what he's doing there (as an MP). People from (his riding) must be ashamed to have an MP like that."

An aide in Petit's Ottawa office said that the MP was very busy, and would not likely have time for an interview to explain his comments.

But when asked if the remarks represented the views of the Harper government, Heritage Minister James Moore said the government was committed to investing money across the country in support of the official languages.

"For us, there are two official languages in our country, and we are protecting them," Moore said in the Commons on Wednesday.

Coderre said the government should force Petit to apologize and straighten him up to demonstrate that it doesn't endorse what he is saying.

Back to - The Daniel Petit Story: When Ignorance is Bliss

Daniel Petit New Conservative But Old Reformer Racist

When Conservative MP Lee Richardson blamed immigrants for the rise in the crime rate, many people were surprised ("Talk to the police. Look at who's committing these crimes. They’re not the kid that grew up next door.”).

He wasn't even an a former Reform Party member, who were notorious for making racist remarks. Richardson had been a Progressive Conservative.

Well Daniel Petit, Conservative MP for Charlebourg-Haute-Saint-Charles, Quebec, wasn't a Reform Party MP either, but actually ran for the PC Party back in the 1980's, and was a party organizer.

He certainly shared their views on multiculturalism, which is basically 'not in my neighbourhood'.

Mind you, I don't expect much from Mr. Petit. As one of the Conservatives who agreed to launder money during the 2005/2006 election campaign, he arrived with little integrity, and went downhill from there.

But if you thought being seen on national television giving the finger, was horrendous, that may have actually be his high point.

Liberals want Tory MP expelled over comments on shooting
September 22, 2006
CBC News

Liberal MPs are demanding Prime Minister Stephen Harper expel a Tory MP who suggested school shootings could be curbed in Quebec if more money were given to immigration programs.

Although Quebec City-area MP Daniel Petit has since apologized and retracted his comments, Liberal MP Ralph Goodale still demanded Petit be removed from the Conservative caucus.

"This situation does not need pontification," Goodale said in the House of Commons during question period. "It needs rectification."

When asked about Montreal's Dawson College rampage last week, Petit drew attention to the fact that none of the three gunmen who blasted their way onto Montreal campuses since 1989 was an old-stock francophone.

He suggested a solution to curbing school shootings would be scrapping the gun registry and using the savings to help immigrants integrate better in Quebec.

"So I think the $1 billion that we spent on the [gun] registry should have been spent on the education and integration of immigrants in Montreal."

On his website, Liberal MP Denis Coderre also called for Petit to be ejected from caucus and the Commons standing committee on justice and human rights.

"It's scandalous that a member of Parliament would make comments like that," Coderre said. "Mr. Petit demonstrated shocking hypocrisy after voting in favour of a motion I moved on Wednesday evening rebuking a Globe and Mail journalist who made similar comments. Does the prime minister condone the absurd and irresponsible things his MP said? Does Mr. Petit have the support of the other members of the Quebec Conservative caucus?"

Article raises controversy

Earlier this week, Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest rebuked Globe and Mail writer Jan Wong, who wrote a recent article that suggested Quebec's francophone culture may have contributed to the Dawson College shootings.

Harper's office reportedly reacted angrily when Petit's comments were made public Thursday and contacted the MP, who issued an apology almost immediately.

"I made inappropriate remarks," Petit said in a statement. "I withdraw them entirely because you cannot draw any link between the integration of immigrants in Quebec and the terrible tragedy at Dawson College."

Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, said Petit's retraction is good enough.

"The member for Charlesbourg has recognized that those comments were inappropriate, which is precisely why he has retracted the comments unequivocally and apologized," Kenney told the House of Commons. (Kenney? That's rich. He has even less integrity than Daniel Petit.)

Back to - The Daniel Petit Story: When Ignorance is Bliss