WEEKEND ROUNDUP
Silly season is back
It's hot in Ontario, and some pundits aren't making a great deal of sense.
“Sexism!” shrieks Sheila Copps for the umpteenth time in The Hill Times. (There's an old story about a wolf and a boy she really should check out.) Today's sexist is the Ottawa Citizen's Robert Sibley, for his tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the Parliament Hill monument to women's suffrage pioneers would be better placed on “the front lawn of the Supreme Court” — which the British Privy Council had to overrule to allow women the vote — as “a constant reminder to the Supremos to keep their hubris in check.” It's well worth reading Copps' column in conjunction with Sibley's to understand just how brutally she's willing to misrepresent someone else's argument to get ahead. Once a politician, always a politician, we suppose.
Behold, the logic of the Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui: “Canada has no set rules [on providing consular assistance], only a long-standing tradition to go to bat for Canadians overseas. Sure, the policy was unevenly applied [before the Conservatives took power]. But it was there. The Harperites have thrown it out the window.” In other words, the Conservative government picking and choosing which Canadians it wants to help is different, somehow, from the Liberals unevenly applying a general policy to help Canadians — Canadians like, oh, say, Omar Khadr, whom Siddiqui actually mentions, but only to slam the Conservatives' performance, not the Liberals'. We also reiterate our opposition to lumping in victims of bureaucratic malice like Suaad Hagi Mohamud — the Canadian woman trapped in Kenya for three months — with convicted murderers like Ronald Smith in order to make a point about the government's treatment of Canadians in trouble abroad. It's not for us to speak for Ms. Mohamud, but if we were in her shoes, we'd find it bloody annoying.
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