“The truth will set you free”
the old man in the hat
However, rather than focusing on the negative, I would like to comment on the positive. After listening to Mike Duffy’s “bombshell” revelations of the “second” cheque, paying his legal fees, I was struck by an epiphany. Mike was not crying. He was not sad. He was not angry. He was happy. Joyful. A bounce in his voice and a barely concealed chortle in his voice.
I contend that Mike has had a conversion experience. The truth (or to be charitable, Mike’s version of the “truth”) has set him free. Free to say what many have thought and others have simply not understood. “Stevie the Magnificent” has clay feet.
That is not to say that everything that the Conservative Government (to be clear, the Harper Government) has put forward is bad or wrong. However, we do live in a democracy. To me, that means that the Prime Minister, of all of us, has to suffer the indignities of having press conferences and truthfully answering questions from people who have not been handpicked and whose questions have not been pre-screened, pre-approved and pre-answered.
After all, I did not pick Stevie as my Prime Minister. He was picked by his party, whose elected members can only run in an election if given permission by their leader, Stevie. Do you see room for a whole lot of critical appraisal here? Anyone for biting the hand that feeds you? Seems like a dumb system to me. Should not riding associations pick the candidate and the federal party accept them? You know, like a democracy where the electorate decides who is offered to represent them?
It is also about our MP’s whose voices has been muted by the PMO. Is it easier to govern with only one voice? We’ll see. Our current state of affairs seems to be that no one could say NO to “The Magnificent”. Democracy is messy. It is unpredictable. It is a place where duplicity and fast dealing will catch up with you. There is and should not be only “one “voice.
To the cynical among us, the response may be, “who cares?”. Same old, same old. To this I would answer the following. You have a MP. The MP may belong to a party, but your MP’s function is to represent you. Pick up the phone. Pick up a pen. Look up their e-mail address. Tell your MP what you think of this farce and that they are listening to the wrong voice. It is time to listen to the voice of their constituents and it is time for our leader in the highest political office in the land to tell us the truth. Under oath.
Correction: In a recent column, I incorrectly identified the amount that had been paid on behalf of Mike Duffy as $96,000.00. This was incorrect. At the time the article was printed it was only $90,000.00. As mentioned in this article, that amount has now been increased by a further $13,560.00 for legal fees.
Thirty pieces of silver, adjusted for inflation?
Comments: theoldmaninthehat@sissonridge.ca
