Thursday, December 07, 2006

Freedom fries - Canadian edition

So that's it? That's your whole game? That Dion's mom is French?
That Canadian-born Stephane Dion has dual-citizenship by virtue of his mom being French?

Nutter Ezra Levant in the Calgary Sun : Question of loyalty
"When it comes to making decisions about the war on terror, and Canada's role in Afghanistan, will Dion be unduly influenced by France....?"

NDP MP Pat Martin :
"What if there is a trade dispute between France and Canada? Would he have to recuse himself?"

NaPo : Dion's insult - to France
"Parliament is Canada’s legislature. It is not an airport departure lounge, nor a multilateral feel-good society."
NaPo goes on to disingenuously inquire whether Dion's dual citizenship is fair to France!

Macleans : Divided loyalties?
"The leader of the opposition is French! Or at least, he's entitled to a French passport. But he claims not to have one, and never to have voted in a French election. So what are Canadians going to do about it?"

We don't mind, says Macleans, but other people might.

Lame, guys. Really really lame.

13 comments:

MgS said...

The discussion over Dion's dual citizenship is nothing more than ethnic bigotry in a different cloak.

Using Levant's logic (broken that it is), every Canadian that has dual citizenship is ineligible for higher office. (This would include people like my father who immigrated to Canada in his teens)

Anonymous said...

i'm not sure it's ethnic bigorty....i think it's merley anti-liberal or in some cases , those with sour grapes that rae or iggy didn't get in.

i'm sure if rae had gotten in though, and he had dual canadian/british citizenship for example, we'd hear the same cries. worse yet if he held canadian/israeli citizenship.

what if harper had canadian/u.s. citizenship? more cries.

the next election is so close people can taste it.....layton was going to jump on the new lib leader no matter who it was. those politicians....i wonder what an election tastes like......it certainly couldn't be freedom.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Alison!

At dinner last night I said much the same thing: If this is what they're attacking Dion over, they've got nothing.

Plus I got to explain who and what Ezra Levant was.

Anonymous said...

Ezra Levant is our Anne Coulter.

That anyone pays either any attention is a sign of the apocalypse.

¢rÄbG®äŠŠ said...

Dana said...
"Ezra Levant is our Anne Coulter"

No kidding. He's a cartoon for sure.

Agreed, it's pitiful (and hilariously reassuring) that this is their attack. I hope they don't get wind of that time he punched Geoffrey in gym class.

Anonymous said...

Since you asked.
From the CTV.ca site:

Dion says he would sacrifice French citizenship...

From the article:

There are 41 foreign-born MPs in the House of Commons, but there are no clear statistics on how many of them hold dual citizenship, said CTV's David Akin.
According to the last national census, there are almost 5.4 million people in Canada who were citizens of other countries before they moved to Canada.
About four million of them have become Canadian citizens and 3.5 million of those say they hold only Canadian citizenship.
A little over half a million of those are dual citizens and just over 4,000 are citizens of Canada in addition to at least two other countries.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's one of those gray area that has it's pros and cons. Remember the 1999 flood of Hong Kong residents?
Isn't this a benefit in the long run to a country like Canada? It gives us an inside track for trade and political sway.

The world is shrinking and a closed-minded, fortress North America mindset is naive at best.
It ultimately degenerates into a paranoid world view and self destructive xenophobia.

Alison said...

Thanks for the follow-up, Mes Amis, most kind.

Point taken re xenophobia and Fortress NA mindset, but I'm still working on my Fortress Canada mindset paranoia ;-)

Deep integration of Canada and US on the terms currently being implemented is a corporate aggression on people on both sides of the border. Agreed however that xenophobia entirely misses the point.

Alison said...

Crabgrass, Dana :
Ezra is even more like our Michelle Malkin. Both of them appear completely incapable of seeing how the racism they promote is most likly to bite them in the ass first.

Q : All they had on Dean was a scream.

Anonymous said...

Alison, yeah the Fortress America concept is scary.
Integration is a misleading PR construct suggesting a benign joining or melding.
It wouldn't be a symbiotic relationship but the consumption and disappearance of Canada.
This idea sets some of the CPoCs black little hearts aflutter but their motivations seem to centre around plain old selfish greed.

As an aside, my personal experience with how US integration functions is in workplace.
The company I work for has had the word Canadian as part of its name for 85 years.
It took over a couple of American companies and after a few behind closed door power plays, their management ended up replacing ours.
Ever since the order of the day has been union busting, skirting our environmental and safety laws and even pushing the envelope with basic human rights in the workplace.
I could tell you stories but not in a public forum.
We are explicitly told not to talk to the press, especially after an accident.
The kicker came this year with the issue of corporate identity.
We were informed that Canadian was no longer part of our company name.
We were now re-branded as just two letters and a word, do not say or use the word Canadian in any correspondence.
You folks out west might be familiar now with the way they operate.
I'm sure you have heard of CN Rail.

Q said...

I guess you can be as stupid as you want when you're hiding behind the conservative firewall.

Anonymous said...

in b.c. gordie campbell has ordered health care workers (espeicialy admin.) not to speak publicly. one woman i know in admin. says 'no wonder, there's so much garbage going on he doesn't dare want it let out'.

seems the gag orders are going out everywhere.

levant may be a bigot and fool, but let's remember the ndp were the first to attack dion(not over dually). he holds himself well though....i wish layton would concentrate on the harper government instead of vying for more seats in the next electiion.

the american fortress is going to get worse if steve gets his way with blocking china from investment here. the 'chinese in vancouver' blog has a list of the latest investments china wants to undertake here (canada being in their top choices of investment potentials).

with this comes six of one, half dozen of another....resources is, of course, high on the list. their record of enviornmental minimums is startling.....yet if investment is limited to the u.s., we may as well kiss our minerals, water and forests goodbye. we seem to have already kissed canada goodbye.....time to take it back.

RossK said...

Alison --

I agree that it is lame.

But a 'frame' is lame by any other name.

Which, of course, is the real reason for this little bit of front-ended whirlitzering.

.

Rev.Paperboy said...

The tories seem to think they are running a campaign in the Southern U.S. - attacking a Liberal leader for being French is going to work outside Alberta and Alabama.
Just wait awhile and they will start saying he's 'stiff' and 'too intellectual to be Prime Minister' and that most voters would rather 'have a beer with Stephen Harper'

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