Friday, April 27, 2012

Canadian history according to Stephen Harper

CBC:

Given the growing speculation that the government may be considering an extension to the current mission in Afghanistan, it's a safe bet that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was fully prepared to be grilled on the subject when he headed into the House yesterday afternoon.

But when NDP Leader Tom Mulcair made a third attempt to elicit a simple yes or no answer to his question of whether the PM intends to keep Canadian troops on the ground after 2014, the PM, it seemed, had had enough.

Instead of simply repeating his previous response -- in which he noted that his government has every intention of continuing its policy of bringing "military missions" to the House of Commons -- Harper accused one of Mulcair's predecessors of insufficient opposition to Hitler.

(Yes, really.):

Mr. Speaker, I have made myself very clear. Unlike the NDP, we are not going to ideologically have a position regardless of circumstances. The leader of the NDP, in 1939, did not even want to support war against Hitler.

Not surprisingly, the NDP benches erupted in outrage over the drive-by retro-slur, although Hansard records the words of just one unnamed MP who tried to draw the PM's attention to a potential flaw in his analogy:

There was no NDP.

Which was, of course, correct: the leader in question was J.S. Woodsworth, the party was the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and Woodsworth, a pacifist, was also the only member of that caucus to vote against Canada's entry into World War II, which was supported by every one of his CCF colleagues.

The prime minister, however, seemed unpersuaded:

Okay, it was the CCF, same difference. Parties do change their names from time to time.

And thus, a satirical hashtag was born.
 
Continue reading here.
 

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