05.20.2016 10:15 AM

Act of contrition

He knew he had made a mistake, I’m told. But he was still read the Riot Act by those closest to him, I’m also reliably informed.

I don’t think he will ever do this again. Credit: smart women.

29 Comments

  1. Warren says:

    Boy, that’s a good question.

  2. JH says:

    Truly contrite is good, but he’s got to get hold of that anger management issue, that has now caused a couple of explosions. I don’t care if he kicks the furniture around the office as Haper is supposed to have done – did it a few times myself. But public meltdowns are not good and do not inspire confidence in the leader of a country, no matter what the hair-brushers say.
    As for procedures; the opposition’s duty is to oppose and any tools that allow that should never be abrogated period. The rules worked for the Liberals (and the NDP) in the past. Because the government and their partisans don’t like them now, is only further proof that they are needed.

    • Maps Onburt says:

      BANG ON! If Harper tried ANYTHING that Trudeau tried this week, people (especially incensed Liberals) would have lynched him by now. He tried a minor subset of this after weeks of stonewalling and got labeled a Dictator but Sonny’s Dazed bashes a female MP and drags another MP against his through an angry mob and those same people say he was justified in it… same people who shamed Harper for shaking his son’s hand in front of the cameras. Hypocrites.

      • The Doctor says:

        Yes, but it was an EVIL handshake.

      • ottlib says:

        Of course the reaction to Stephen Harper, when he was leading the government, doing something like this would have created quite a stir with the Liberals and the NDP going bonkers. Now it is the Liberals that are the governing party so it is the Conservatives and the NDP going bonkers.

        It is not hypocrisy it just the way politics is played in this country.

      • Art says:

        Maps, that’s complete hyperbole. Comments like “Sunny’s Dazed” are straight out of Mommies basement.

        • Maps Onburt says:

          SONNY is dazed Art. Art you implying he was in his right mind when he decided to push through elbows out a bunch of MP’s who were 30 seconds late getting to their seats, forcibly grabbing (against his will) an opposition MP, dragging him back through said MP’s screaming “get the fuck out of my way”? And oh by the way smashes into another MP, bringing her to tears. G

  3. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    I would put it to the PM thusly: he needs to remember that the body he is directing is now that of a prime minister.

    He must grasp what Stephen Harper instinctively knew — how and when to comport himself with reserve and discretion.

  4. lou says:

    We kicked out a dictator and elected a king. Chew on that.

    • MississaugaPeter says:

      Incredible insight.

      It would have been so, so different if both of them had not been given majorities with less than 40% of the vote.

  5. The Doctor says:

    I know Warren isn’t the biggest fan of Paul Wells, but of all the ink used up on this matter, I recommend reading Paul Wells’ blog post on the Maclean’s website. He does a good job of explaining the context of why things got so heated leading up to the incident. This is partly a result of a very ambitious Liberal legislative agenda coming up against the Liberals’ promise to be nothing but nice in Parliament (including at least the implicit promise to never abruptly close off debate). As Wells rightly concludes, something had to give.

  6. ottawacon says:

    It usually takes a fair amount of deal-making to get any contentious piece of legislation through, and/or a certain amount of simply letting the Opposition go for a while – hence the heavy-handed closure by Harper’s Cons last summer, after a week of filibustering. In this instance, Leslie and Leblanc are not getting deals done, but the PMO wants to keep to an aggressive schedule. So for a relatively reachable early June deadline, the Liberals sort of went nuclear.

  7. Charlie K says:

    Contrition is excellent, but grace in forgiveness and acceptance is equally as admirable.

    From my perspective, I have not seen any of that. Rather, I have seen humanity in partisans completely wash away as they passively aggressively try to inflict pain on one another as if they could sin no greater than the other.

    Canada needs to take a collective deep breath and enjoy the long weekend.

  8. Francis says:

    Growing backlash towards the NDP and the way they conducted themselves prior and after the incident.

    Trudeau profusely apologized for his actions, but anyone notice how Mulcair hasn’t made a public statement in the House or on TV regarding the matter? For a man that is looking for one last fight to take on, I find it odd that he’s largely absent from the response to the incident. Perhaps Mulcair realizes that his enraged tirade towards the PM (also caught on camera) was something he wanted to go unnoticed as Trudeau took a licking from the media.

    Also important to note, Peter Julian categorically denied any attempt by the NDP caucus to obstruct the CPC Whip from reaching his seat. Video evidence shows the diametrically opposite as being true. This is commonly referred to as lying and it appears that Julian, an elected member of Parliament, did exactly that on national television when directly asked by a reporter.

    Despite the chicanery that the NDP has partaken in since last Monday, they’ve shown no sense of decency and instead have chosen to trivialize women’s issues to score political points (re: Niki Ashton).

    • Eric Weiss says:

      And Brosseau is even worse.

      “If I was a man and I was hit in the nuts, would we having the same conversation? I don’t know,” Brosseau said.

      If she were a man, we wouldn’t even be having a conversation at all.

      • Maps Onburt says:

        Nice job blaming the victim guys. So 2016.

      • Francis says:

        Just to be clear, I don’t doubt that REB was somewhat disturbed by what happened.

        I don’t give the slightest shit for that feminist “women-can-handle-anything-men-can” crap; most women are undoubtably much more susceptible to becoming shaken by a “traumatic event” than most men. So, when Trudeau accidentally elbowed REB, I’m sure she was shocked by the unexpected force of his elbow. She thought it was all fun and games but wasn’t expecting things to get real. As she states, if she were a man she wouldn’t have to justify herself; well, thats probably true but if a man was hit in the nuts I don’t believe he’d had to leave the room to cry privately and be so emotionally disturbed. So, she’s probably right but not in a way she’d want to be.

        Also, this whole episode serves as the perfect example as to why women will be fundamentally treated weaker than men in these kinds of situations: when the reaction is so visceral to REB getting incidentally bumped into compared to the flaccid reaction to the CPC whip getting grabbed by the arm. It consequentially reinforced the very thing feminists are trying to fight.

        With all that said, the NDP caucus should be immensely proud of themselves as “progressives” for trivializing their own values for cheap political points.

  9. Francis says:

    I’m not a procedural wonk, but as I understand it: the Assisted Dying bill that the Liberals were trying to expedite due to the deadline will now likely miss said deadline leading to an absence of a law altogether. Hence, the introduction of Motion 6; which was meant to speed up the process in addition to responding to the legislative “trick” played by the NDP last Monday in which they triggered an unplanned and unexpected vote when a huge number of government MPs were absent. The intended result was to bring down a government bill (which doesn’t happen when a party has a majority) and had 139 Liberal MPs not been rushed into the House for the vote (and Geoff Regan not saved Andrew Leslie’s butt by breaking the tie vote in the government’s favour), it would’ve have been a very embarrassing situation for the government.

    The problem is, now that Motion 6 has been withdrawn, there is no mechanism to speed up debate anymore. And just to be clear, Motion 6 was a mechanism to speed up debate — not limit it. The Government House Leader proposed repeatedly that the House sit late into the night and debate the Assisted Dying bill if need be as the looming deadline approaches. The downside to Motion 6, of course, was that it gave a little too much power to cabinet which was something the Opposition vehemently opposed. Nonetheless, we now find ourselves in a situation where the actions of the NDP on Monday have now essentially lead to the situation we find ourselves currently in. This bill will now be further debated in the House and unless the Liberals use time allocation (which I’m not sure if they have or not already) the SCOC’s deadline will be missed.

  10. dean sherratt says:

    I take it that the smart women cannot by implication include Gerald Butts. I wonder what his reaction was to the matter?

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Dean,

      Warren is typically discreet but I think he means Sophie Grégoire and Katie Telford.

      • dean sherratt says:

        Thanks for the comment – that was my take as well though I did wonder what Butts would have thought and said. I would call those two as close to being “senior cadres of the Party” which was a euphemism for Joseph Stalin when he was head of the USSR.

  11. Ted H says:

    A couple of observations: As Confucious said “fools make mistakes, wise men make amends” let’s hope Justin learns from this, it’s early in the mandate. Ms. Brosseau sounds like a bit of a dive artist, blaming this situation on the fact that she missed a vote? Give me a break. Conservatives used to say “play ball or we will prorogue Parliament” maybe what the Liberals are saying is ” play ball or we’ll shove the bat up your a**!

  12. !o! says:

    I unno, glad he apologized? If both Don Cherry and my 80-something year old grandmother thinks this is all a mountain out of a molehill, and people in the US see this as ‘badass’ I think he’s in the clear.

    • Kevin T. says:

      Yeah, I think he’ll actually grow from this, He fucked up, no two ways about it, and he and everyone else know it. He has always been underestimated and then rose higher. If he learns from this, and history shows he learns fast, he’ll be just like many of us who’ve messed up at some point or another and had to redeem ourselves. I’m pretty sure many people have had some variation of an “oh fuck, why did I do that?!? It wasn’t even that bad. Oh shit, maybe nobody saw? Fuck Fuck Fuck! Fucking Youtube!”

  13. Davie says:

    I notice that the this is paying out is, above all, the belittling of a female NDP MP, the trivializing of the rule of order in our House of Commons, and the growing admiration for a 44 year old, kid who just made an honest but politically incorrect mistake while trying to get things done.

  14. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    I find Ms. Brosseau to be highly credible. Her internet and e-mail reaction only reinforces her credibility. They attack her because they know she’s right. What does that reaction say about many male-female relationships? Not good in 2016.

Leave a Reply to Maps Onburt Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.