Here are some quotes from Helena Guergis (Independent - Simcoe-Grey) yesterday during Question Period. She wants the PMO to release the letter that it sent to Parliament's ethics commissioner Mary Dawson regarding the allegations against her two months ago. Her story and Stephen Harper's story are completely different on whether she was told what the criminal allegations were; she claims she wasn't told and Mr. Harper's office claims that she was told why she was booted under the wheels of the CPC bus. First, it's hard to imagine that two months have gone by already and second, my how the Parliamentary wheels of justice turn slowly.
Hon. Helena Guergis (Simcoe-Grey, Ind. Cons.):
"Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister told Canadians he was aware of serious criminal allegations against me and he called in the RCMP. His chief of staff, Guy Giorno, wrote a letter to the Ethics Commissioner outlining these specific allegations. The ethics office spoke with Derek Snowdy, read him the letter and he denied having said these things.
Snowdy testified under oath before a committee that he provided no information about any illegal or inappropriate actions on my part and called the party lawyer to complain about this misrepresentation.
If the Prime Minister is so confident that the party lawyer outlined these allegations to me, will he table this letter in the House?"
Here's John Baird's response:
"Mr. Speaker, the government has forwarded the serious allegations to the relevant independent authorities and to the member. We will let those independent authorities do their work."
Note that he didn't really answer Ms. Guergis' question at all. Not atypical behaviour for our Parliamentarians.
As we know, the allegations against Ms. Guergis have come from Derek Snowdy, a private investigator who, when told the contents of the letter by an investigator in the ethics commissioner's office, denied that he had made certain specific allegations.
While I'm not a big Helena Guergis fan, I have to admit that if I were in her shoes, I'd be anxious to find out what I had been accused of that caused me to be unceremoniously dumped from Cabinet and the CPC. What is most interesting about her actions in the House today was that both the Liberals and NDP who had been asking for her resignation in the past, were now taking her side against the Harper government outside the House. Liberal MP Siobhan Coady and NDP MP Pat Martin both jumped to her defence regarding the release of the contents of the letter stating that Ms. Guergis "...has every right to know what she is accused of...". I don't disagree; it's just rather shocking to hear it from the Opposition side of the House.
As the proverb says, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend". Apparently, Ms. Guergis has a whole bunch of new friends.
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I was planning to show the clip of Ms. Guergis in action sometimes over the weekend. I hope that doesn't step on your toes too much.
ReplyDeleteI'm starting to think that Ms. Guergis' biggest fault (apart from his apparently bristly personality) is her choice of husbands. I think she's being untruthful to protect him now, but that's what spouses do, right? I think Mr. Jaffer is the real troublemaker in the relationship.
As my wife pointed out to me, isn't a bit of a coincidence that they got married the day after he lost the election? This entitled him to a whole host of privileges he wouldn't have had otherwise.
No, you go right ahead. How and where do the videos come from?
ReplyDeleteYes, I would agree. She seems to be one of those wives that believes everything her husband says (or plays the part very well). It would be interesting to know whose idea it was to get married the day after he lost the election. You are right; his MP privileges appear to have continued more or less unabated right to passing around his MP business cards.
I notice you're on www.oyetimes.com now as well.
Yeah, the oyetimes people contacted me and asked me if they could use some of my articles. I figured why not? The name is fake, in case you were wondering (it's actually the real name of medieval Spanish hero El Cid).
ReplyDeleteAs for the videos, I get them from ParlVu (http://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/parlvu).
ParlVu is a great service that lets you watch streaming video from pretty much everything that goes on in Parliament. The painful part comes when I have to capture the stream, convert it out of .wav format, and chop it up to get the clip I want. But I find it rewarding enough.
Thanks for the tip on ParlVu.
ReplyDeleteI figured the name was fake, as is mine. Yours shows more imagination though, so the credit goes to you.
How are you getting people to your blog? I'm commenting a lot on various sites, kind of a cheap way to do things but I can't think of anything else. I'm even trying Twitter.