Speaker Scheer and the death of Parliament

By Montreal Simon
For years Stephen Harper and his Cons have been slowly killing our Parliament.
They have have debased it, they have rendered it impotent.
They have reduced it to a scripted horror show, where every question is answered with an attack on the opposition.
But yesterday with their ghastly leader out of the country they practically finished it off.
For this is what happened when Tom Mulcair rose to ask this question about Canada’s mysterious mission in Iraq:
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has failed to answer clear questions about his ill-defined military deployment in Iraq,” Mr. Mulcair said by way of preamble. “Yesterday Conservatives refused, once again, to answer in this House, but the member for Selkirk—Interlake stated on CPAC that the mission will end on October 4. Will the Conservative government confirm that the 30-day Canadian commitment in Iraq will indeed end on October 4?”
Instead of any kind of answer, he got Paul Calandra, Stephen Harper’s Parliamentary Secretary.
You know the Con clown . . .

And this:
“Mr. Speaker,” the parliamentary secretary said in response, “there is a great deal of confusion with respect to the NDP position on Israel.”

Which as Aaron Wherry points out, was absurd enough.
For all the theoretical intents and purposes of this particular moment in the daily democratic life of our country, he might as well have stood and told the Speaker of his grocery list or read aloud from the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe. He might’ve stood and made farting noises with his left hand and his right armpit. Indeed, that might’ve at least entertained the kids watching at home.
But what happened next, when Mulcair continued his questioning, and appealed to the Speaker Andrew Scheer to ask Calandra to follow the rules of democratic decency, turned our Parliament into a cheap FARCE . . .
Yes, believe it or not, rather than ask the clown Calandra to answer the questions, or to stop turning Question Period into some kind of Con cabaret, Scheer punished Mulcair.
Removing his two remaining questions, and moving on to Justin Trudeau.
Even though Mulcair had every right to keep trying to get a serious answer about a very serious issue. He was merely asking Scheer to stop allowing Calandra to turn the House he looks down upon from his throne, into a bad joke or a fascist circus.
Or the death of our democracy. Wherry:
We might, for instance, insist on expecting that if the government of the day commits the men and women of our military to a conflict that that government should grace us with straightforward explanations for that commitment. That if our democratically elected representatives stand in the House of Commons and ask specific questions about that commitment, that those questions — questions ultimately asked on our behalf — deserve answers, not merely responses.
This is not quite rocket science. These are merely the hopey changey principles on which we aim to govern ourselves.
And who can blame Mulcair for questioning Sheer’s neutrality? When he has made so many dubious decisions.
And has from the moment he sat on his throne acted and sounded like a Con robot…

Or his master’s voice.
And all I can say is, before we have to hold a mirror up to the cold blue lips of our democracy, to see if it’s still alive.
When we fire his maniac master . . .



... However, the Right leaning political columnist with the Regina Leader-Post runs to Scheers defense