communists

She likely did not appreciate the response, but Elizabeth May did get the Prime Minister on his feet with this question at the very end of QP yesterday.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister recently said in Colombia that it was a matter of principle that Cuba should be excluded from the Summit of the Americas. As Communist China keeps buying up Canada, I am wondering where the principle is. While Cuba has a long way to go, it recently held an open mass where the Pope invited Cuban Catholics to worship. There is no such freedom of religion in China’s persecution of Tibetan monks, Falun Gong and Christians, which goes unimpeded.

So for about three years now Jason Kenney has been championing this proposal to build in Ottawa a monument to the victims of communism. But some members of the committee debating the issue worried that it would offend the countless Canadians who identify as communists. So the title was changed to “the victims of totalitarian communism.” That’s when the committee really put their brains to work:

Board member Adel Ayad said the name was troubling for its “very tight definition” and for the presence of the word “communism” in the title, as Canada has a communist party.

I’ve been in Munich trying to save the world, but the most interesting thing I read during the breaks was this article in Le Monde: a group profile of a half-dozen senior public servants who were fired by Nicolas Sarkozy at intervals, over the last year and a half, after some incident, crisis or mishap. One police chief didn’t provide enough police protection for the Corsican villa of a friend of Sarkozy’s; there was a sit-in there, and the guy was fired. A hospital director was fired after a schizophrenic patient escaped and committed a murder. And so on. All of them learned by communiqué that the price of being prominent near the scene of political trouble was their jobs.

Bilingual readers with an ability to handle very salty language should follow this link to one of the cleverest pieces of political satire to come out of Quebec during this or any campaign. But if you can’t handle saucy words, including the French word for “seal,” stay away….

From the Inkless emailbox: a joint statement by the culture ministers of Ontario (Aileen Carroll, former federal minister under Martin and, I think, Chrétien); and Quebec (Christine St.-Pierre, former Radio-Canada TV reporter). What is interesting, of course, is that the Charest government continues to appear to define itself as a Liberal government in concert with the Queen’s Park Liberals, if not with the Ottawa Liberals, rather than as an ally of the Harper government:

..from ITQ.

…and pretty soon you’re talking real money.