Gently Rebuked

A little like the wisdom of Solomon. No wonder Parliamentary Speaker of the House Peter Milliken is well respected for balanced impartiality and intelligence. Guess we should add cerebral creativity to that too, now. And a well-deserved bit of chiding going out in both directions. Mostly, to remind all sides in the House of Commons that they are adults with seemingly mature minds, and it's time to put their brains back to work.

They've become addled of late. Slightly more than usual. Chimpanzees gone amok in the mirrored funny-house.

Yes, the opposition opposes, but it also supports, doesn't it? Reasonable government-led initiatives, that is...? And most Conservative-led government initiatives to date have been fairly reasonable, and sometimes verging on excellence. Which is why, one supposes, that in turn, the NDP and the Liberals have seen fit to support the government on occasion.

And which also explains why the Bloc Quebecois, in its Quebec-first-and-only fixation rarely fails to slam the government.

It's a sham of the most blatant order to begin with, to haul Parliament into an uproar of pretentious concern over the purported welfare of apprehended Taliban in the hands of their Afghan confreres. It is simply that any trumped-up allegations of wrong-doing on the part of the government suits the fancy of the opposition.

Principally the Liberals in the instance that if they were governing the situation would have been no different.

And the NDP, who deplore Canada's presence in Afghanistan - in an attempt to overcome the designs of the Taliban, to assist the current Afghan government, corrupt as it is by Western standards, to meet its obligations to its people - insisting on an immediate troop withdrawal, while simultaneously championing Canada's military entering Democratic Republic of Congo conflict, at the UN's behest.

All the parties behaving as though they're collectively in a state of apprehended adolescence, rather than behaving as mature parliamentarians. The Conservative government is unwilling to disclose documentation to the tender mercies of the Liberals anxious to pounce on anything that would leave a scintilla of doubt whether government or the military was aware of 'torture' in Afghanistan's prisons.

Claiming, logically, that under the circumstances, classified documents must be protected in the interests of national security. While Members of Parliament insist that they have the parliamentary right to view all such documents. Of course memory is not that distant of classified documents being left in the possession of unauthorized individuals, resulting in the hasty demotion of a Cabinet Minister.

In this instance, that is not the issue at hand, but the principle of the issue, and Speaker Millikan has done a fine high-wire balancing act respecting his office and his reasoning process. It would be very nice if we had a non-partisan parliament, but we do not. It would be reasonable to anticipate that elected officials see themselves as serious representatives of the public weal; they appear to have problems with that.

They behave as childish caricatures of serious lawmakers, mawkishly insisting that they have the interests of the public in mind, and the reputation of the country to uphold, while they make a mockery of both in their obvious self-interest. All parties descending to the unfortunate level of street-playing, hormonally-maladjusted adolescents.

Thus, giving the belligerents an opportunity to think a trifle more deeply about their disparate positions, and offering his opinion that he has trust in their eventual ability to regain their collective senses and do justice to their elected positions, there is yet hope that reason may prevail.

One supposes.