Members of Parliament know that most Canadians could not care less about the games politicians play in Ottawa. For the record, though, last week was a good one for the Reform Party, games and all. It found itself isolated among the five political parties but on the side of Canadian public opinion.
As a party elected on an outsiders’ platform, it was an important affirmation that it has not joined the political mainstream, despite damaging accusations that leader Preston Manning has ‘gone Ottawa’.
In fact, Manning gave one of the best speeches of his parliamentary career last week, speaking in favor of free speech, the absurdity of “mainstream” politicians going out of their way to be nice to separatist MPs and the place of the Canadian flag in Parliament.
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A truly bizarre incident was at the core of Reform’s banner week.
In response to a complaint from a Bloc QuŽbecois MP that Canadian flags at the Olympics were stressing out Quebec athletes, Reform and Liberal MPs staged a patriotic rally when she next appeared in the House of Commons.
As Suzanne Tremblay rose to speak Feb. 19, MPs rose to sing O Canada and to wave small Canadian flags.
The BQ protested that the flag should not be used as a “prop” in the House of Commons and that the MP was denied a chance to speak (she was not). Speaker Gilbert Parent, a Liberal MP, agreed to consider the matter and ordered that Canadian flags not be kept on MP desks until he decides.
When a handful of Reform and Liberal MPs said that if Parent ruled in favor of the separatists, they would try to have him replaced, the Tories objected that these renegade MPs were threatening the Speaker and should be disciplined.
Supported by the Liberals, the NDP and of course the BQ, the issue was sent to a special Commons committee and MPs like Alberta Reformer Ken Epp will have to defend themselves for speaking their minds.
Manning used the incident to great advantage. In the Canadian Parliament, he said, a display of the flag should never be banned. It was particularly galling that the issue arose because the separatists were offended. “Canadians think it is time the Speaker and the traditional parties stop falling over backward to accommodate separatists who want to break up our country, and show some patriotic backbone.”
Radio callers, letters to the editor and faxes to the Speaker’s office suggested that Canadians agreed. And it gave the Reform leader a chance to draw a sharp and popular line between his outsiders and the rest of the politicians.
Reform patriotism in the Commons offends Liberals but they sided with the BQ in the last Parliament when Reform tried to have a separatist MP censured for advising Quebec members of the armed forces to defect to a Quebec army if the 1995 referendum broke up Canada.
The separatists “like the socialists” are humorless. And the Tories who raised the issue are “the ragtag remnant of the once-great Progressive Conservative Party.”
All in all, not a bad week for the Reformers in Parliament.
