Rex Murphy: We now have two national crises, and Parliament has abdicated its responsibility.
Bold stuff. Sound familiar? it probably should.
Rex:
The prime minister is not acting as a prime minister should, or should be allowed to. He has not the right to end the deliberative and accountability functions of Parliament.
Me:
Parliament is by far the most important institution in Canada: in this critical time in our history facing the worst economic collapse since the time Queen Victoria signed the British North America Act, we must meet. We must have the opportunity to debate and deliberate the unhitherto expenditures of money from the public purse. We must be able to, in full view of the public we serve, question and challenge the claims made by unelected advisors to the Minority Government.
Rex:
The question is: Are we a country, or are we not? A country has a Parliament. It has representatives from every district in the country who meet and debate. It sounds national themes. It gives national responses. It cannot shrink to a two-month solo performance in front of a complacent handful of press, and the daily iteration of “we have your back.” That is not a country. It is a sideshow.
Me:
Canadians deserve to know that the decisions that are being made, many of which have larger or longer reaching impacts than any ever before made by the Federal Government, are not being made by a tiny cabal answerable only to a small number of the Members of this House who serve extremely narrow regional and ideological masters and instead are being made by a majority of Parliament who represent every person region and belief system within our shores.
Rex:
Mr. Trudeau has been indoors in a cottage for 50 plus days. His morning standups under the Tent of Commons have passed the tedious stage, passed dreary, passed repetitive, clichéd and annoying. They are as useless as they are arrogant. And that’s a high bar on both. One person, even a PM, is not a government.
Trudeau is either scared of the House of Commons, or he has no regard for it. Perhaps it’s both.
Me:
It is wholly wicked and undemocratic to have Canada be led from the front porch of a building the vast majority of Canadians would be arrested for trying to visit, by a man who less than eight months ago failed to obtain the confidence of this House.
Rex:
The minority in power has opened the sluices on the greatest spending binge in our history, at the precise moment our national economy is, perhaps since the Great Depression itself, at its most feeble, its weakest, its most precarious.
The greatest spending in the weakest economy, millions in emergency relief, businesses by the thousands almost certainly to fail. And somehow this paradox of a closed Commons during a woesome crisis wears on without a bleep.
Me:
Canadians deserve a full and frank accounting of what the Government of Canada will be doing, what goals we are aiming to accomplish, when and how we will know if we have succeeded or failed at them, and what information we know for certain and which information we are merely guessing or modelling.
Rex:
Here’s the rule to follow: If you don’t want to be in the House of Commons, then resign from it. Imitate the military. Show some honour. This rule should apply to all 338.
Here’s the shorter version: Get back or get out.
Me:
Anyone who has been chosen to pay this bargain of a price and still rejects the bill is free to abandon this duty forever: but they should be forevermore banished from this House and the sacred mission it has to play in the days ahead.
