Jack Layton Personally Organizes a Protest to Interrupt his Own Speech?

Posted by Devin Johnston on October 27th, 2009

The Wheatsheaf, with characteristic incisiveness, blasts the Liberals and Conservatives over the ridiculous allegations that Jack Layton personally organized a protest to interrupt his own speech in the House of Commons. Please take a moment to vote up the Wheatsheaf's post at Progressive Bloggers. Incidentally, I've met Joe Cressy on a couple of occasions and, in my brief interactions with him, have found him to be a sincere individual with a tremendous commitment to social justice and environmental causes.

The last time I checked, Canadians have a right to assemble as a group to protest for or against proposed legislation. If they do so in the House of Commons in a way that interferes with the business of Parliament, they should be asked to take their protest outside. That is exactly what happened here, and I see no problem at all with (a) the protests or (b) the removal of the protesters from the gallery. I guess it makes sense that the Conservatives are upset about this; after all, they're mostly angry old men who get upset about everything from Twitter to rock n' roll.

But the Liberals? I just don't understand why so many grassroots Liberals (who are supposed to be for pushing the government to reduce GHG emissions) feel like this is some sort of victory for them. First they abandoned their stance in the climate change debate by delaying a piece of legislation they already voted in favour on five separate occasions. Then a group of angry protesters denounced the Liberals in an event that received national media attention. If I were the Liberals, I would be trying to downplay these incidents as much as possible, rather than trying to present them as some sort of weird phyrric victory over the NDP, which, in any event, had nothing to do with the protests.

Anyway, here's that blog post from the Wheatsheaf:

Thanks to Jane Taber and CTV, Joe Cressy is out of the closet. Yep – he is an environmentalist. I am sure God will spite him for the way he chooses to live his life. Every protest his chain, partially sunk in the boiling tar sands of hell, are getting longer and longer.

There is some debate, about whether you can be partisan and an activist. Let see, a quick blog search suggests Joe works for those environmental heathens, the Pembina Institute, and he sits on the executive of the Ottawa Centre NDP. Clearly, the Pembina Institute is some sort of cover for pro-NDP activities. An audit of [their] books will reveal that this nefarious group is funded by the NDP, possibly out of Jack Layton’s own pocket. After all, a party that fights for the underprivileged clearly has rich backers. And to be as high as 17% in the polls, such a party must have a vast network of umbrella think tanks that disseminate their socialist agenda. Socialism died with USSR, so how else could this party still be around?

Clearly, this just shows how underhanded the NDP is. Other parties simply give their staffers a ten-minute break to go and protest. On the other hand, the NDP admits to their underhandedness

Asked Karl Belanger, press secretary to Jack Layton, about suggestions that the NDP was associated with yesterday’s protest. His response.

Ya, that’s right. We organized a protest to interrupt our Leader
during his question. Clearly, it was a socialist plot from the NDP.

Only through partisans eyes is an individual only a partisan hack, and not an individual of various interests.

Spread the word and fan the winds of change: