Consider Michael Dent-Andt's defense of Bev Oda:
Harper knows this. He also knows, because he’s been around the block, that in the grand scheme Oda’s transgression was not so terrible. She was clumsy, not dishonest. That’s likely why he’s still protecting her.
Why just clumsy? Here’s where it gets interesting. For Oda is indeed being accused of lying to Parliament.
When she appeared before a Parliamentary committee in December, the International Cooperation minister insisted she had no idea who’d scrawled the word “Not” on her bureaucrats’ written recommendation to approve a $7-million grant to Kairos, a church-based, foreign aid group. Rejecting the grant reflected her own position and that was that, Oda said then. It didn’t matter who wrote the “Not.”
How utterly juvenile - a Minister of the Crown trying to evade responsibility for orders she later admits she gave by "not knowing" which member of her staff added the "Not" to those documents.
The cold, hard fact here is that she gave the order to amend the document in question, and whether she did the amendment by her own hand or not is irrelevant. She made the decision and then tried to avoid being held responsible for it - by playing silly little semantic games.
Ms. Oda no doubt acted based on party policy - and therefore likely as not on the instructions given to her by the Prime Minister's office. (As there is little doubt that nothing happens in the current government without the PMO's approval)
Or perhaps you'd like to consider Eric Duhame's stunningly stupid article trying to deflect attention away from the direct influence that Harper is allowing certain religious groups:
Unfortunately, as often happens with the Crown corporation, it betrays a leftist bias and demonizes the political right.
Last week, Enquete journalist Brigitte Bureau tried to scare us with her report about the privileged access some evangelical Christians might have to Ottawa’s inner circle of power.
Opposition to abortion and gay marriage are presented as proof of the progress made by some obscure religious leaders. The report implies a Conservative majority would recriminalize the first and abolish the second, but it does not mention that a strong contingent of Conservative MPs are clearly opposed to going back to both issues.
The fact is that we already know that there is a significant number of TheoCon$ in Harper's caucus (and arguably Harper among them). Harper's already shown that he will ram whatever he thinks he can through by bullying the opposition - and that's with a minority. Give him a majority, and there's good reason to suspect that he will do everything in his power to slam Canada's society back a good century or more.
The fact that he has allowed his backbenchers to promulgate legislation that is clearly aimed at subjects like abortion is a telling statement all by itself, especially in a world where the PMO exercises absolute control over everything that is said and done by members of the government caucus.
Neither Nadeau nor Radio-Canada mentioned, however, that last Sept. 4 the Bloc MP received the 2010 El-Hidaya plaque of appreciation from the Montreal Muslim Community Center, a centre described by Canadian Muslim author Tarek Fatah as “a hotbed of pro-Hezbollah activities in Montreal.” Hezbollah is classified as a terrorist organization by Canada.
Given his participation in a rally under the Hezbollah flag in August 2006, it is not surprising to see Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe come back to that Radio-Canada story during his General Council last weekend while his party was officially reopening the door to a coalition with the Liberals and the NDP.
Ah yes, the standard CPoC tactic of deflecting attention away from the original point by trying to make someone else look as bad or worse. Nice try, boys.
It flabbergasts me to see how ready Bloc MPs — and to an even greater extent federal Liberals — are to denounce people of Christian faith in the Conservative party and use them to scare those of us who do not believe in God by telling us how they do not share our values and have a social conservative agenda, while at the same time they are caving in to the most radical elements of the Islamists in the name of political correctness, Trudeau’s multiculturalism or — less openly — a few thousand Muslim votes.
The real threat to the equality of women, gay rights and our fundamental Western values might not be the ones the publicly funded CBC is presenting us.
Oh yes, it's all about the muslims - of course, how silly of me. I won't even begin to address the underlying bigotry of that tactic.
Let's talk more bluntly about the matter. The issue that the Enquête show was really addressing was that of allowing any one religion have undue influence on the government of our nation. (and after suffering through the Duplessis years, Quebec has more reason than most to be edgy about any religion dominating politics)
I'm sure that in the coming months we can expect more of this kind of nonsense out of Sun Media publications, especially as they are clearly well on the road to becoming Stephen Harper's private propaganda source.
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