Parliament was winding down on the first Friday afternoon in March when Winnipeg New Democrat Pat Martin cranked up the rhetoric about the Conservative campaign against the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
Agriculture minister Chuck Strahl is called Il Duce in Western Canada because he tramples rights with the same gusto used by the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, said the former union organizer who represents a poor downtown Winnipeg riding that includes CWB head offices.
“It was the left that smashed the fascists in Franco’s Spain in 1937,” said Martin. “It is going to be the left that is going to smash fascism in this horrific example today.”
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Those words have caused a parliamentary uproar.
Conservative MPs argue it is unparliamentary to call a minister a fascist. They have asked speaker Peter Milliken to order the MP to withdraw the words. Milliken is considering the issue.
Last week, Martin insisted there is nothing wrong with use of the F word and he did not directly say Strahl is one.
“My implying the minister was acting like a fascist is no different than his fellow Conservative colleagues saying that I often act and speak like a socialist, which is an accusation that they make freely and often and one that I do not necessarily object to or deny,” Martin told the House of Commons in his own defence.
Peace River Conservative MP and chief government whip Jay Hill said it was a “new low” to have an MP argue that inferring another MP is a fascist is acceptable.
“Let us just imagine this is allowed to stand,” he said. “What will be next? There will be people in this place compared to Adolph Hitler. That is where this is headed.”
Strahl told reporters that he has been called many nasty names during the wheat board debate, including some questions about his parentage, and it is offensive to be compared to fascists.
As is his style, he also turned it into a joke.
“I particularly don’t like the comparison that the left knew how to deal with Mussolini and so the left will know how to deal with me, considering Mussolini got hung by his heels and then drawn and quartered,” he said. “I’m kind of hoping maybe that’s not going to happen to me and I think my family’s on my side on this one.”
Strahl has the distinction of having been labelled both a fascist and a communist dictator during the debate.
At one point in the House of Commons, Liberal Wayne Easter compared Strahl’s decision to replace pro-monopoly CWB board members with anti-monopoly supporters to a Stalinist purge.
Josef Stalin was a Soviet dictator for 24 years accused of killing millions, including opponents who would disappear in purges.
Easter was never challenged for his reference.
