Smoking Oda stinks

The Bev Oda affair is odious. Whether or not the embattled Conservative cabinet minister is oda-here will be decided in the next two days before Canada's MPS take the mid-winter break from the current session.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has stood firm in the House of Commons in supporting his International Cooperation Minister. The opposition parties have been unrelenting in demanding her resignation or firing, neither of which is likely. And the whole brouhaha will, in all likelihood, be forgotten by the public by the time MPs return to Ottawa. Not surprising, when a recent poll suggests only 15% of Canadians follow federal politics.

However, as Andrew Coyne writes in a must-read column on MacLean's.ca, "This is about whether this government can be held to basic norms of civilized democratic behaviour." Why should it start? The conservative base in this country - the only Canadians that Prime Minister Stephen Harper cares about - sees nothing morally wrong with a government that lies. As long as it's a Conservative government. It stinks.

In just a few days, this story has gone beyond Bev Oda to being a question of Stephen Harper's ethics - his sense of right and wrong. To have a photograph of Oda smoking a cigarette on the home page of theglobeandmail.com is, quite simply, poor form for The Globe and Mail to display in its home page. Any for the media to mock her wearing sunglasses is childish. It detracts from the crisis that the nation faces. Do Canadians want Stephen Harper single-handedly running this country or a civilized parliament democracy?

Oda's actions in the "not" affair that has played out this week are highly questionable, but to allude to her overall character as being questionable by showing her as a smoker implies that she is a bad person.
As the critical thinking about smoking has formed:

Smoking cigarettes is bad;
Smokers smoke cigarettes;
Therefore, smokers are bad.

That's unsound and completely invalid because not all smokers are bad people. (Harper doesn't smoke.) And to draw Oda's addiction to cigarettes, while she is undergoing tremendous professional and personal stress, is irrelevant to the political debate.

As U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said in a recent Fox News Sunday interview with Chris Wallace, "It's a bad habit, but I have it. It's a legal product. I choose to smoke. Leave me alone."


Bev Oda and the Prime Minister should not be left alone about what actually transpired, but Oda should be left alone to smoke privately.

How is an abortion bill not an abortion bill?

“How is an abortion bill not an abortion bill?” said Liberal MP Anita Neville. “This certainly introduces discussion into the House of Commons and it is a rather sneaky way of doing it. The government hasn't got the courage of bringing it forward in a straightforward way to appeal to their base, so they are doing it in a back-door way and I think it is deplorable.”


As quoted in the Toronto Star, Neville's question was in response to ultra-Con backbencher Rod Bruinooge, chair of the all-party pro-life caucus in Parliament with a secret membership and, in all likelihood, a secret initiation rite and handshake. Bruinooge introduced a bill that would penalize anyone who “coerces” a woman into ending her pregnancy against her will.


An abortion bill is not an abortion bill when it is a bait-and-switch tactical maneuver by the Prime Minister's office to deflect attention from more serious questions surrounding the alleged complicity of Canada's military in the torture of Afghan detainees and, to a much, much lesser degree, the sleazy antics of former status of women minister Helena Guergis and her partner Rahim Jaffer - the neo-con celeb couple who are now and henceforth called "Ra-ra-helena," as befits the gossip-feeding  Canadian equivalent to "Bennifer" and "Branjolina." (And to be said in the style of 70s disco classic Rasputin by Boney M. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvDMlk3kSYg)


Prime Minister Stephen Harper has kept the 69% of anti-choice geezers in his Conservative caucus muzzled. He has also repeatedly stated that the abortion debate would not be reopened in the House while he is PM. At least he recognizes the Canadian consensus - the abortion debate is over. Done. Finished. You lost, years ago. Move on.


So how is this abortion bill not an abortion bill, despite Bruinooge's contrived explanation? When it suites Mr. Harper's political gamesmanship.


Photo credit:http://unrepentantoldhippie.wordpress.com/2008/12/

Harper steps up attacks on HIV/AIDS solutions while preaching "unity of purpose"

Vaccine facility mystery deeps by the day
Silence from Quebec ramps up rumour mill

There comes a point, and that point is now, when rumours can be accepted as fact. There is no mystery. Advancing HIV/AIDS awareness, education, prevention, treatment and now hope for a vaccine is not part of the PM's conservative idea of a caring social agenda.

Since becoming Prime Minister, Stephen Harper has tried to shut, by every means possible, the door of Insite, Vancouver's globally lauded safe injection facility for drug addicts in the Downtown Eastside. If successful, and he won't be because the law is against him, the closure of Insite would have negative and devasting implications to the spread of HIV.