Honourable Members

Have you ever heard something said that was just so patently stupid you were convinced you hadn’t heard correctly? I heard something like that last week and after I realized that there was nothing wrong with my hearing and I had heard it correctly, I thought my head was going to explode.

The Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada stood up in Parliament and chided the leader of the Official Opposition for not supporting the war against Hitler.

Where does stupidity like that come from? This is the leader of our government. The Leader of the Opposition wasn’t even born until six years after WWII, the party he leads wasn’t formed until 1961 and didn’t exist during the war and, of course, the war has  been over for more than 60 years.

The Prime Minister’s comments received the usual huzzahs and rah rah’s from the honourable members on his side of the House and boos and derision from the opposition benches.

Personally, I’m surprised that he didn’t hold them responsible for trying to delay construction of the Trans Canada Highway, which finally opened in 1962, with endless environmental assessments. Perhaps that is coming.

While it was the Prime Minister and his trained pit bull, the Minister For Foreign Affairs, this time; the simple fact is that no party in parliament deserves to have its members called 'honourable. Justin Trudeau recently referred to the Minister of Foreign Affairs as a 'piece of shit' in The House while his colleagues cheered him on. 

The opposition parties ask ridiculous questions that are designed less to get answers than to try and embarrass the government while the government trots out responses that ignore the question. In the end, nothing of value is said, nothing of value is accomplished and our honourable members refer to this as representative democracy.

I wasn't so sure about that because it doesn't represent what I believe in so I asked Scottish comedian Danny Bhoy to give us his perspective on how the honourable members in some European parliaments conduct themselves.

Hmmm. It seems thinks aren't any better in Europe and maybe even a little worse in some countries but surely somewhere in the world, honourable members are cognizant of the fact that they represent the people. Surely somewhere, there are politicians who show the proper respect for the people's parliament.

I went further east in my research, all the way to Taiwan to see if I could find honourable members who understood and respected that they were in the people's house, representing the people.

While honourable members in Canada and parts of Europe have devolved parliamentary language and decorum down to an adolescent level, honourable members in Taiwan have dispensed with language all together.

Considering the manner in which most members of parliaments seem to conduct themselves, it kind of makes you wonder how they ever came up with the term 'honourable' members doesn't it?

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