We interrupt news and views of the Liberal Party of Canada leadership campaign (and the trainwreck of a continuous news release that is Joe Volpe taking money from kids and membership applications from the dead) to inform you of the following news.
Alfonso Gagliano is not a member of the Liberal Party of Canada – LPC(Q)
September 23, 2006 MONTREAL – The Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec) reaffirms that Mr. Alfonso Gagliano is not registered on the list of members in good standing of the party.
Indeed, Mr. Gagliano has tried to register online on the national Website of the party and may have received an automated message acknowledging the receipt of his request. The latter, however, still had to be approved by the provincial wing of the party.
As such, the Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec) confirms that Mr. Gagliano’s request has been refused.
In 1937, Tommy Douglas said the following before Parliament:
“Against whom are we arming? What potential aggressor is more aggressive today? Oh, I know that bogeymen have been trotted out in
this chamber. It has been suggested that it might be Italy, it might
be Germany, it might be Japan.”
Today, Afghan President Hamid Karzai will address the members of the 39th session of our Canadian Parliament as the world faces a new brand of fascism entrenched in the mountains, caves and fanatical minds of his country. Afghanistan seeks its freedom from those that would forbid girls from attending schools, women from holding public office and all citizens from enjoying liberty. As Prime Minister Harper outlined to the UN General Assembly yesterday in New York, the world must stand together in common purpose against terror and fascism for it is the mutual need for security of member states which saw the formation of the international body.
Some say that those that are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it. Canada welcomes President Karzai and his request to rout out tyranny in his country. Thankfully, the Canadian government will continue to answer the call wherever it beckons. Some, however, seemed committed to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.
Additional context (an update): I presented a quote from Douglas from 1937 (two years before the outbreak of war). Like everyone else in Canada at the time, Douglas eventually did come around by the beginning of the WWII (good for him). Not only that, he helped MacKenzie King pass the draft helping the allies defeat the axis powers. While Tommy Douglas was originally mistaken about the fascist threat, he certainly came on-side when it counted. Jack, however, seems committed to repeat Tommy Douglas’ original mistake and ignore the lesson learned by the CCF parliamentarian.
Last week, tragedy struck the West-end Montreal CEGEP Dawson college as an individual opened fire and killed one young woman and wounded a number of other students. It would seem that he was driven by hate and perhaps madness as nobody could truthfully start to justify his actions.
Learning of the events that day, many of us felt the sadness that comes along with senseless loss of innocent life and then some of us started to weigh the consequences: what would this mean for Montreal? Who is to blame? What shall we do about video games, goths and guns?
We somehow knew that these events would drive debate on these issues but we wouldn’t know how soon and by whom.
Enter the CBC, our “common voice”, our self-proclaimed cultural guide, and initiator of our national dialogue and debate.
According to our state-run broadcaster, this event reminded us of the horrible events of the massacre which occurred at Ecole Polytechnique years ago. Seventeen years ago Marc Lepine opened fire in downtown Montreal, murdered 14 women, did so because he hated women, and as a result, he shattered the peace and innocent mindset of Canadians everywhere.
And he did so with a gun.
Since murder was already illegal, the state sought to prevent future tragedies with new policy. In 1995, new policy was drafted and called for the registration of all long-guns.
Years later, in 2006, nothing has changed; a murderous spree in Montreal was committed by a individual set on mass murder. The gunperson (“gunman” like “fireman”, “manhole” and “policeman” went out of common parlance during those years which saw a liberal gender neutralization of our speech — didn’t it?) did indeed use a gun. However, it was registered as required by the law that was inspired by previous acts of madness committed by guns by murderers with guns. Thus, debating points generated by this tragedy against the current Prime Minister’s plans to scrap the gun registry would seem to be moot. Logic indicates that the two are not related in this way. In fact, a logical connection is instead found in the fact that the long-gun registry failed to prevent this tragedy.
Logically, this doesn’t call for the “scrapping” of the registry, but it would be illogical to fault the PM in the wake of this tragedy for promising to follow through on this unrelated commitment.
That doesn’t stop the CBC from seeing things illogically, however. Julie van Dusen of state broadcaster reports on the political nature of the tragedy the day after it happened. Of course, there’s no fault in her doing so. However, van Dusen sets the political tone of what we should expect to follow; we should expect the PM to (illogically) receive pressure against scrapping the long-gun registry. We should expect this because Julie van Dusen has conveniently provided the narrative for the Parliament which would conveniently reconvene the next Monday.
The CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices Part III section 5.1 reads:
“Single programs dealing with a major controversial issue should give adequate recognition to the range of opinion on the subject. Fairness must be the guiding principle in presentation, so that the audience is enabled to make a judgment on the matter in question based on the facts.”
van Dusen’s report seems to be in violation of this important standard. In her report, using the Prime Minister’s long-stated and known plan as the subject of her report, van Dusen only presents the opinion of gun control side of the debate. van Dusen calls upon Wendy Cukier of the Coalition for Gun Control to present the argument against Harper’s “scrapping” of the gun registry. Cukier ends by saying “the only people that support that are the gun lobby”. Those expecting a balancing opinion on this controversial topic from farmers, duck hunters, Garry Breitkreuz, or even the shadowy “gun lobby” were disappointed as van Dusen decided to initiate this discussion debate with her own talking points (murders in Quebec falling by half, political fallout for Harper in Quebec, Ecole Polytechnique, Harper’s ME position, environment, same-sex marriage and Afghanistan!). van Dusen again ignores balance and calls upon Jean Charest’s opinion against Harper on the gun registry.
With this unbalanced report on Stephen Harper’s plan to scrap the gun registry, and as the gun registry has no logical connection with the Dawson shootings, has the CBC made a special effort to initiate debate on this issue?