Of love and politics and life

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments

Jonathan McLeod notes Jack Layton’s use of the word “love.”

It is unfortunate that it requires the death of a man, and the words of a political leader, for the country to embrace an outlook of love over anger, but how glorious, should that be the legacy he leaves to us. Love is transcendant. Love is transformative. It appears Jack Layton understood this. We are fortunate to have such men among us, if only too briefly.

Mr. Layton used the l-word in his first statement last month announcing his new cancer diagnosis. It reminded me, at the time, of something Bill Siksay, citing Svend Robinson, said upon departing Parliament this spring—Mr. Siksay’s remarks had stood out to me as something I’d never heard before. Talking to Anne McGrath for this piece, she reminded of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians and mentioned former German chancellor Willy Brandt as a leader who had spoken about love and politics. Love was also, to cite perhaps the most celebrated example, at the heart of Martin Luther King’s rhetoric and philosophy.

More thoughts from Brian Topp, Tim Powers, Ralph Goodale, Niki Ashton, Glen Pearson, Nick Taylor-Vaisey, Kady O’Malley and Dan Arnold. From Torontoist, a panoramic image of the chalk tributes outside city hall in Toronto and another picture capturing the extent of the messages, a display that prompted this note last night from Mr. Layton’s son, Mike.

The Liberals' wake and some parting remarks

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 33 Comments

A new day: Peter Milliken with Ted Hsu

The final humiliation: a cash bar

Last week the Liberals gathered the night before what would be their final caucus meeting with both defeated and elected MPs. One Liberal staffer called the party a “wake”; a Hill security guard predicted it would end early because it was a cash bar. Surviving Toronto Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan arrived with a bandaged hand that will need surgery. “I fell on Wednesday and the government fell on the Friday,” she says. Five weeks campaigning didn’t help: “Even when you break your hand,” said Duncan, “people still want to shake it.” Some days ended with Duncan in excruciating pain. Defeated MP Marlene Jennings arrived with a white cane, announcing that she is now officially vision-impaired. The one person who spoke at the party was surviving MP Ralph Goodale, but no one seemed to be listening; former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff left before Goodale spoke. The Liberals’ only two rookie MPs were there: Sean Casey from Charlottetown and Ted Hsu from Kingston, Ont., which was previously represented by Speaker Peter Milliken. Hsu’s win was a surprise for the Conservatives, who for years said that once Milliken retired they would easily win the riding.

Continue…

'We are all judged by it'

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, May 9, 2011 at 10:35 AM - 43 Comments

Glen Pearson eulogizes the 40th Parliament and wishes better for its successor.

For those entering … make this different, make it count. Put aside the rank partisanship and seek a third option, a way of not only compromise but reconciliation. Don’t say that politics demands indignities because your families, your constituents, your country and perhaps your God demand better. Be servants with a past tense, people who can say as you exit, “I was a respectful Member of Parliament. I worked across the aisle. I found commonalities whenever I could. I behaved as though the House was like a place of faith and I kept my pact.” You have a past – use it for the betterment of our people and our world.

'I actually don’t know quite what to tell these folks'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 82 Comments

Glen Pearson deals with defeat.

It was expected by most that I would win and the media sent its staff to my campaign office to cover the victory party that wasn’t. It became clear as the evening progressed that the vote split between myself and the NDP was proving fatal. Yet I’d had something of a premonition of the outcome during the last few days of the contest. At doors I canvassed I kept hearing certain stories about how I spent too much time in Africa, or that my voting presence in the House wasn’t too impressive. When I informed them that I only spent one week a year on that continent (Sudan), and that I take it on my holiday time over New Years and on my own dime, I could sense the hesitation in their voice. “Oh … that’s not what we heard when the Conservatives phoned us last night.”

The information era (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 12:36 PM - 5 Comments

Glen Pearson pitches the religion of open data.

Each political party must now ask itself what it must do in order to renew not only Parliament but itself in the process. While progressive governments around the world have deployed digital technology to advance transparency and unshackle information to fuel knowledge and innovation, Canada has been held in check by the most secretive government in its history. It remains to be seen whether the technological revolution that is succeeding in renewing government representation throughout the Middle East and Africa will actually unfold in Canada, where research announced yesterday stated that we spend more time on the Internet than any other nation.

The meaning of honour

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 11:26 AM - 25 Comments

Glen Pearson considers what it is to be honourable.

All of us as MPs, ministers, or even prime ministers, are called upon to be honourable. It’s a more important trait than being smart, gifted or even eloquent because it is the “honourable” aspect of our representative task that makes the flourishing of ideas and compromise possible – it keeps us accountable. It is behaving, not as though the cameras are filming, but as though your children were in the gallery, wanting to be as proud of you as they possibly could. It would mean acting as though your parents, your God, your family and your friends, and your peers opposite, were all watching you, desiring that you show the kind of grace they believe you to possess. But even more importantly, it would mean you were honouring the good folks that put you in such a lofty place.

Bruce Anderson considers recent events from a political perspective.

Jim Travers, 1948-2011

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 4, 2011 at 10:47 AM - 33 Comments

Toronto Star columnist Jim Travers passed away yesterday at the age of 62 and after nearly 40 years in journalism. Last year, Mr. Travers won the National Newspaper Award for political writing after penning a lament and clarion call for Canadian democracy. His words then are only more vital now.

If mad-as-hell voters can take back a riding, as they did in Vancouver by rejecting Emerson’s adopted party, then surely MPs can recapture control of Parliament. It’s possible, too, that ministers, bureaucrats and police officers can be forcefully reminded that their public duty is to the people, not to politicians. Even prime ministers can be told they are not monarchs.

Appealing as it sounds, advocacy requires effort. It’s so much easier to go with the flow, to let situational democracy evolve with each reflex, stopgap, jerry-rigged response to every new policy demand and political threat. But that leads away from accountability and toward the Big Man culture that Africa is finally throwing off and has no place in Canada.

If war is too serious to leave to generals, then surely democracy is too important to delegate to politicians.

The Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen mark his contributions to each. Tributes were paid yesterday by Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, Susan Delacourt, Don Newman, Mark Kennedy, Bob Rae, Glen Pearson, John Baird and Pat Martin.

Explaining Peter MacKay

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 4:19 PM - 91 Comments

Kathryn Blaze Carlson profiles the Defence Minister.

Mr. Pearson said he believes that Mr. MacKay’s “hands are tied,” and that if the minister was “free to be less partisan, he would.” He said the minister last year reached out to discuss future military deployments — proving Mr. MacKay’s willingness, he said, to include opposition MPs in his decision-making. “If we were in a different kind of House of Commons, under Brian Mulroney or Joe Clark, for example, I think Peter MacKay would be more in his element,” Mr. Pearson said. “I think he would come into his own.”

The Oda ado: overblown?

By Colby Cosh - Friday, February 18, 2011 at 10:01 AM - 241 Comments

No doubt I’ll be called a Conservative lapdog for saying so, but I find myself balking at the elite consensus that Bev Oda deserves hanging for having deceived the people’s House. In the spirit of devil’s advocacy (or the presumption of innocence), let me lay out the defence case. You can consider, if you like, that it is here to serve as a target. We’ll start from Michael Ignatieff’s version of the indictment: “We have a Prime Minister who lets a minister deceive the House of Commons, falsify a document, and instead of reprimanding or dismissing her, gets up in this House and actually applauds her.” [Cries of "Shame, shame"] Continue…

What of CIDA?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 19 Comments

Glen Pearson laments for the Canadian International Development Agency.

In all the focused activity surrounded the CIDA minister at the moment, it is wise for all of us in the drama to remember that a dedicated agency has been maligned in this process and that our only hope for doing something that could be truly lasting, is to restore it to its former usefulness. It is to the Agency’s welfare and betterment that we must look if we seek to undertake our best work as MPs. To bring down or to maintain a minister is a compelling exercise, but to empower an institution, honing it for the coming international challenges ahead – that is building something that will still be functioning long after we’re gone.

The precise nature of the problem

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 3:03 PM - 7 Comments

Glen Pearson notes the misdirection inherent in fretting about decorum.

I’m all for more decorum – been fighting for it for four years – but it’s useless if the Parliament of Canada can’t discover compromise and move ahead progressively with legislation. My friend had only taken a placebo and was imagining the rest. The true test of professional political behaviour is whether representatives can find accommodations on the vital issues of the country. That is not happening in Ottawa.

Touche

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 12:26 PM - 26 Comments

Glen Pearson questions the reliability of the narrator.

Following Jim Prentice’s retirement, I recall reading some articles about how certain MPs stay on too long and it’s best for them to step aside because they are too set in their partisan opinions. I found myself wondering today if that might not also be true of some pundits.

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 29, 2010 at 12:07 AM - 2 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 21, 2010 at 3:08 PM - 10 Comments

Towards a more boring future

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 12:37 PM - 0 Comments

Glen Pearson calls for a less-entertaining politics.

Question Period in this town is a theatre of the absurd for the last few years now; everyone knows it and attempt to laugh it off. To even consider acting in such a fashion when pensioners are losing their way, food banks are facing record numbers, and those without jobs are giving up in despair is hardly the actions you would expect of pubic servants. In hard times, humour is always a welcome diversion. But not this kind, and not this way. The last thing we need right now is political tomfoolery disguising itself as compassion. South of the border this week, 37% of Americans voted, while 66% participated in Hallowe’en. That’s scary in any political scenario and there’s nothing funny about it.  It’s time to get back to decent, respectful and boring politics.

The battle of ideas

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 1:49 PM - 0 Comments

Glen Pearson, though not a distinterested observer, sets up the central theme of this new session of Parliament thusly.

So, while you’re hearing all the hoopla that political parties and the media fixate on over the weeks ahead, try to consider the “quiet crisis” that is really at play in today’s Ottawa.  It’s about your way of life and whether it becomes more private and self-centered, or whether it applies itself to the serious public problems that threaten the collective health of this country, and the planet, at present.  Either way, it’s decision time.

If the leaders of the Liberal and Conservative parties stick to their respective stump speeches there are at least the makings of a grand philosophical battle over the most appropriate role for the state at the start of the second decade of the 21st century.

Mitchel Raphael on why kids love spending time at Paul Martinland

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Don’t tell the PMO they helped him
When Liberal MP Glen Pearson gave his children a choice of summer holiday—either Disney World in Florida or to the home of former prime minister Paul Martin, an hour outside Montreal in the Eastern Townships—the kids said, “Paul Martin’s.” (In the end he took them to both places.) Paul Martin has a pond with a trampoline that the kids love jumping on. His property also has a golf course and the kids like riding on the golf carts. Pearson is not a golfer but his wife, Jane Roy, is. Summer trips to Martin’s home are becoming a Pearson family tradition. Martin is the one who convinced Pearson to enter politics and, jokes the Ontario MP, “I have cursed him ever since.”

Continue…

'Can it be changed, and if so, in what ways?'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 30, 2010 at 4:36 PM - 0 Comments

A week after the Public Policy Forum’s conference on Question Period, the Canadian Study of Parliament Group will have its own day of discussion. This one will also include Michael Chong, this time along with the NDP’s Denise Savoie and Liberal Glen Pearson.

Mourning Mario

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 11:27 PM - 0 Comments

Ottawa tonight mourns the passing of a lovely giant of a man. Condolences and reflections on the passing of Mr. Lague from Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, Paul Martin, Stephane Dion, Glen Pearson, Ralph Goodale, Tim Powers, Paul Wells and Susan Delacourt.

From the backbench

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 2:33 PM - 10 Comments

Glen Pearson considers the last 24 hours in Toronto.

If Stephen Harper made a mistake on this, it was likely in his decision to move the summit to Toronto rather than some remote place, like a military base. In so doing, he stripped businesses of vital income for two weeks. To add to that loss must now be added the physical damage created by the Black Bloc. Those firms must be compensated for a loss they had no way to prevent.

But the Prime Minister never caused the destruction yesterday. That was left up to a kind of criminal DNA that was not only “un-Canadian,” but deeply unjust. And justice will only be served when their actions receive their due punishment. Thoreau would be sickened.

The contentious case of Russ Hiebert

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 9:17 AM - 80 Comments

Last week, as part of a series of posts on MP expenses, Canwest’s David Akin noted that Conservative Russ Hiebert had spent more than any other MP on travel outside his constituency. This was duly noticed by the Vancouver Sun. Mr. Hiebert eventually explained the costs were incurred transporting his wife and young daughters back and forth between Ottawa and his B.C. riding.

A public debate ensued. The sign outside his constituency office was pointedly vandalized. Glen Pearson came to his defence. The CBC’s Alison Crawford carefully considered the intersection of family, politics and public money. And now Mr. Hiebert says he’ll look at what he can do to reduce his spending.

The QP 20

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 31, 2010 at 12:12 PM - 13 Comments

Michael Chong’s motion on Question Period reform is seconded by no less than 20 MPs. Those seconders include 14 Conservatives (Mike Allen, Dona Cadman, Maxime Bernier, Larry Miller, Gord Brown, Nina Grewal, James Rajotte, John Cummins, Peter Braid, Rick Casson, Greg Thompson, Merv Tweed, Brian Storseth and Bruce Stanton), four Liberals (Frank Valeriote, Martha Hall Findlay, Glen Pearson and Siobhan Coady) and two New Democrats (Denise Savoie and Brian Masse).

That which is actually funny

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM - 29 Comments

Glen Pearson notes the laughter that accompanied Jean Chretien’s return to Parliament Hill yesterday.

Outside of Chretien, it’s really hard to think of our last really funny PM.  Oh sure, there was Pierre Trudeau, but his wit was so knife-sharp that it often left others with nothing to say.  His understudy Chretien, however, told the kind of jokes I used to hear all through the years at the various firehalls I worked in.  What was funny about him was that he was “funny” – that’s all.  At times his humour was brilliant; at other times it could be slightly cruel; and then there were those occasions when it actually became a pragmatic and useful tool for creating ease and bringing out some kind of consensus.

Shh! He might hear you

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 3, 2010 at 4:02 PM - 116 Comments

Last week, Jim Abbott was quite insistent that “no one” wanted to debate the issue. Today, Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told aid groups to “shut the f— up.” Glen Pearson, meanwhile, lends a firsthand perspective to the debate we’re not advised to partake in.

This is what makes all the hoopla circling around CIDA’s decision not to fund groups that undertake abortion procedures so maddening.  Maintaining a pro-life decision in Africa often results in the death of expectant mothers.  I have listened to the debates and realize that both sides have their legitimate arguments.  The problem is that Bakhita died because we argued so vociferously that we eventually forgot her.  She perished because we live in a political world in Canada that plays more to our party base and retail politics than it does to a woman dying in her family home after great personal suffering and loss.

There is something remarkably unheroic about this.  A government suddenly decides after 25 years of international practice that it won’t fund a group that could have helped Bakhita.  Yet at the same time, it doesn’t possess the courage to live its morality at home in Canada because to do so could result in an election loss.  All the fervent pro-lifers in the governing party practice their ethics on a poor woman far away in Africa, yet refuse to stake such a claim at home because in the end it never is about Bakhita but about power. Their pro-life stance ultimately led to death.