The House of Commons is a sham

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 18, 2011 at 5:12 AM - 145 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

In the early evening hours of an otherwise unremarkable Thursday in December, as a crowd gathered on Parliament Hill for the official opening of the annual Christmas light show, Jim Maloway was lecturing a nearly empty House of Commons on the history of suicide as a technique of military assault. “We had Dutch soldiers fighting for control of Taiwan in 1661, who used gunpowder to blow themselves and their opponents up rather than being taken prisoner,” he explained.

Maloway, a New Democrat backbencher, is either the last man truly dedicated to Parliament or the greatest symbol of its current neglect. In 2010, he spoke more than three times as many words in the House—309,647 in total—as any other member of Parliament, nine times more than the Prime Minister. In the month of December alone, Maloway contributed to debates on vehicle imports from Mexico, autism, white-collar crime, free trade with the European Union, RCMP reform, the parole system, Canada Post, human rights, a proposed national Holocaust monument, railway safety, the prosecution and registration of sex offenders, immigration reform, the military justice system, the census, oil tanker traffic off the coast of British Columbia and prison farms. All the same, you’ve probably never heard of him.

On that Thursday night in December, the House was debating a Senate bill that sought to add suicide bombing to the Criminal Code. A small cluster of four Conservative MPs, chatting with each other in the southwest corner of the room, waited impatiently for Maloway to finish. Irwin Cotler, the Liberal MP, sat listening on the opposition side. The teenage pages assigned to deliver notes and fetch glasses of water for MPs had already begun to clean up. In addition to the 300 or so empty seats around Maloway, the galleries above were empty as well, save for a few police officers.

After he had finished, a series of perfunctory oral votes confirmed that the bill had the unanimous support of the House. And thus did Canada apparently become the first country in the world to explicitly outlaw suicide bombing as a crime unto itself. Save for a short item on the National Post‘s website a week later, not a single major newspaper would carry word of this apparent landmark in international law.

Continue…

The Mailbag: Conrad Black, New Sex Moves, Aaron Wherry’s madness

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 38 Comments

Welcome to the Tuesday Mailbag on Wednesday, where we’re still not sure what the hell happened last night on Lost (two Jacks? are we sure the space-time continuum can survive that much eye moisture?) but we are sure of one thing: it’s hard to imagine anything as funny as the Lost clip show that traditionally proceeds the season premiere. Believe me – I know a little bit about funny, in that a) I get paid to write a “humour” column, and b) I’ve seen Stephen Harper in a T-shirt. And nothing – with the possible exception of Stephen Harper in a T-shirt – is as hilarious as trying to picture a Lost virgin sitting down and thinking to himself, “Okay, I’m going to invest an hour in this thing and then I’ll be completely up to speed for the final season.”

Plane crash. Island. Polar bear. Flirting. Smoke monster. Crazy French chick. Mysterious billionaire. Mysterious energy pocket. Mysterious code that apparently saves the world, unless it doesn’t. Shipwreck. Mercenaries. Explosions. Big stone foot. Death. More death. DEATH. Mascara Eyeliner Guy. Time travel. Nosebleeds. Hippies. Book club. Hydrogen Bomb. Boom. Go.

The queries below were submitted by readers. Remember – there are no stupid questions, except for the question of whether that Toyota hurtling toward you in your rear view mirror is going to stop in time.

•••

Dear Scott:

Wherry’s writing about American Idol, and presumably has to watch it to do so. Did he tell Coyne he didn’t like proportional representation or something? What gives? – WDM

WDM –

This is kind of awkward, so come on over here out of earshot. I don’t want Wherry to hear.

[Whispering.] Okay, listen. Here’s the thing. Late last year, Aaron was getting pretty upset about rumours of prorogation. The thought of having to go three whole months without a daily forum in which to describe John Baird as an arrogant gas-sack – frankly, it gave him the shakes. It affected him mentally, if you catch my drift. He kept coming up to Wells, looking for reassurance.

Aaron: Tell us about the Parliament, Paul.

Paul: Aww, Aaron, come Continue…

Parliament: A Year in Review

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 3:39 PM - 3 Comments

Read Aaron Wherry’s live chat at http://www2.macleans.ca/live-chat-with-aaron-wherry/

Where our money goes in Afghanistan

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 4:38 PM - 3 Comments

Colleague Aaron Wherry points to an op-ed by University of Ottawa professor Nipa Banerjee, who ran Canada’s aid program in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2006, in which she alleges that the United Nations and bosses at the Canadian International Development Agency chose to ignore and suppress reports of fraud and incompetence at an NGO and aid project Canadians were financing rather than do anything to fix it:

“Upon receipt of my e-mail alerting CIDA headquarters about the alleged fraud, a superior instructed me to not write any more e-mails on the subject, specifically so as to not leave any written trail that might have to be made available to the Canadian public under the Access to Information Act. My attempts to probe the results of any audit on the NGO met with similar stern warnings.”

Ms. Banerjee’s bosses need not have worried. I can personally attest that the chances of the Canadian public finding out that CIDA wastes their tax dollars on dubious or fraud-ridden projects is negligible for the simple reason that CIDA is neither transparent nor accountable. Continue…

"Everyone can claim a lot of things" — Scott Taylor on the abduction – and release – of CBC reporter Mellissa Fung

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 9:21 PM - 1 Comment

Read the original macleans.ca interview with Esprit de Corps publisher, independent military analyst-at-large and all-round action figure Scott Taylor here, and then check out the followup posts from Chris Selley and Aaron Wherry, in which they attempt to reconcile the Prime Minister’s claim that “no ransom was paid” with Mellissa Fung’s own account of how and why she was released.