Historic parliamentary precedent vs. Slam Drunk

Friday, 04. 30. 2010  –  Opinion

Matt Cavers

Front page of The Province, Wednesday, April 28

Wednesday morning found me standing in line at a busy downtown cafe. The guy in front of me had a Globe and Mail tucked under his arm, and I caught a glimpse of the headline: “Parliament has the power.” That’s right! House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken had ruled the day before on the long-simmering question of whether the Conservative government was acting in contempt of Parliament by refusing to turn over documents related to the Afghan detainee controversy. Huge news! I jumped ship on the lineup and raced off to find a newspaper box. I scoured the downtown streets. Turns out it’s hard to find a Globe box in Vancouver. But the other papers would be just as good in a pinch. Aha! The Sun! But no - its front page only told me that there were “Tough new laws aimed at drinking drivers in B.C.” Really? Well, that’s notable too, I suppose, but - oh, how about the Province! In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have bothered looking, but, anyway: no Parliament, only a doozy of a headline: “Slam drunk.” Snap!

I eventually got my paper. (Thanks for the great coverage, Globe and Mail.) But it soon started to trouble me: how is it that, when the Speaker of the House of Commons lays down a whopper of a ruling (summary: the executive branch of government doesn’t have the right to ignore the will of Parliament, which is, as you’ll recall, more or less the will of the Canadian people) that’ll have enormous implications for our current government, Vancouver’s two major dailies turn a blind eye? Sure, they did cover it - the Sun and Province aired it on pages B2 and A23 respectively. Humph. I’m not going to accuse anyone of media bias here - let’s remember that the Globe backed the Harpers in the last election - no, instead I’m going to accuse Vancouver of forgetting about Ottawa. And that kind of chafes me, given that, you know, it’s the seat of our government and capital of our country and all. Occasionally pretty important things happen there.