Hansard Quotes of the Day

Among the many fakeries and falsehoods foisted on the House yesterday by the Cons in their bid to maintain the most secretive and unaccountable government evah, usual frontrunners Laurie Goldie Hawn and Cheryl Gallant got beat out by Gary Goodyear, Minister of Creationism, Science, and Technology.
Here he is explaining why the motion to release documents the government had already supplied to Christie Blatchford and friendly Afghan committee witnesses but not to the Afghan committee members or Richard Colvin, who wrote some of them, would be a very. very. bad. thing.

"Madam Speaker, perhaps I will just make a comment. The fact is that we are debating a motion here that is asking the government to release information that could in fact entail something as simple as a soldier's name, middle name, address and perhaps phone number. It is information that the Taliban are hoping they can get their hands on, not just to attack that soldier but also potentially to put the family of the soldier at risk."

And that, boys and girls, is why the dates and the word torture must be blacked out on Richard Colvin's three year old reports.

Second prize goes to Goldie, who characterized a Canadian soldier's reports of extrajudicial killings and torture as :

"one Taliban got hit with a shoe"

and for the following rhetorical flight of irrelevancy :

"When it comes to the big ticket items of national unity and doing the right thing on the international stage, Liberals and Conservatives have always spoken with the same voice. That is the voice of freedom, it is the voice of courage, it is the voice of doing the right thing for Canadian men and women here and abroad, people like the people of Holland in 1944-45..."

Gallant takes third place for her accusation on two separate occasions that personal info about soldiers would be twittered straight from the Afghan committee to the Taliban, a point seconded by Jim Abbott who is himself on the committee.

Honourable mention - Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Abandoning Canadians Overseas, for : "We are at war."

Steve and Airshow MacKay had no new material - just the same accusations that not supporting the Cons' contempt for parliament is the same thing as attacking the troops.
High point : a brilliant speech by Paul Dewar.

The motion to release to the Afghan committee documents related to the care and detention of Afghan prisoners passed by 145 to 143. Steve has no intention of honouring that vote.
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Alberta : Freedom To Create Morons

Creationism seems to have made some legal inroads into Alberta.

CBC : Evolution classes optional under proposed Alberta law

"A controversial Alberta bill will enshrine into law the rights of parents to pull their children out of classes discussing the topics of evolution and homosexuality.

The new rules, which would require schools to notify parents in advance of "subject-matter that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality or sexual orientation," is buried in a bill that extends human rights to homosexuals.
Parents can ask for their child to be excluded from the discussion."

So what has evolution got to do with religion? you might reasonably ask, a mere month after Con MP Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology, muddled them up himself.

"Stelmach has confirmed the bill will give parents the authority to exclude their kids from classes if the topic of evolution comes up."

A bill which deals with "religion, sexuality, or sexual orientation" does that?

In honour of Alberta's bid to officially become Texas North by giving parents the right to raise its children to become morons, the controversial Alberta tourism ad showing children on a Northumberland beach next to the slogan "Alberta : Freedom to Create Spirit to Achieve" has been amended above accordingly.
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