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Canada’s magazine

A plea for decency

I wasn’t in the House this afternoon on account of other commitments, but I’m told that shortly after Question Period, Speaker Peter Milliken rose to rule on a point of order previously raised by Liberal Derek Lee. Mr. Lee complained last month that a statement by Conservative MP Phil McColeman should have been ruled out of order as a personal attack on Liberal Mark Holland. That the time allotted for statements by members—15 minutes each day normally reserved for noting charitable causes, the accomplishments of constituents and such—was being used to launch partisan attacks was identified as a problem last March by Speaker Milliken, a problem he attempted to addresses with limited success.

McDonald’s at the Château Laurier

McDonald’s hosted MPs at a reception at the Fairmont Château Laurier. (Left to right) Liberal MP Rob Oliphant, John Betts,?president of McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada Limited, Liberal MP Bonnie Crombie and Dave Henderson, chief financial officer.

The inexperienced lifer

Do MPs generally have too little experience or too much?

The Backbench Top Ten

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.

Fight the real enemy

Amid talk yesterday of Rahim Jaffer, Helena Guergis, Devinder Shory, lobbyists, religion, ideology, firearms, abortion policy, poverty, torture, nuclear weapons, the prosecution of Omar Khadr and salmon farming, John Baird astutely identified the foremost issue facing Ottawa as the legal career of Liberal MP Derek Lee. Seems the biography of Mr. Lee posted on a law firm’s website describes him as participating in activities that include “lobbying government.”

The Backbench Top Ten

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.

What’s next?

In terms of what a compromise might look like, we refer again to some of the options already explored for establishing a forum that might safely review sensitive documents. The interim committee on national security that studied these sorts of issues in 2004 was chaired by Derek Lee, but also, perhaps notably, included the following members: Joe Comartin, Wayne Easter, Marlene Jennings, Serge Menard, Kevin Sorenson and Peter MacKay.

Battling bullying

The Jer’s Vision/Day of Pink 5th Anniversary Gala in Ottawa celebrated those who have helped battle bullying and homophobia. Liberal MP Hedy Fry won one of the Youth Role Model of the Year awards.