What a week on the Hill

The week in Parliament ended with the Liberals accusing the Conservatives of trying to obliterate the Liberals from the history books.

“I have no doubt in my mind that they would try to eradicate everything that has been good by the Liberal party and by great Liberals in this country from the history books if they could. Fortunately right now, they can't, but it just again speaks to the nature of this particular Conservative government. They see bad in everybody else except themselves. They don't see the good in what – not only what the Liberals have done in this country, but what non-Conservatives have done in this country and I don't think that is a good example for us as Canadians,” said Liberal MP Todd Russell.

Of course, in the middle of the week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried to insinuate that the Liberals were not prepared to extend anti-terrorism legislation in order to protect a relative of a Liberal MP. The Liberals literally shouted the PM down — and were then criticized for uncivil behaviour for failing to show appropriate respect to the office of Prime Minister. Russell was having none of that line of thinking.

“I wouldn't care who he is,” Russell told me outside the Commons yesterday. “When he attacks the character of another person, when he slanders another person, when he smears another person with no evidence, when he makes these accusations against a member of parliament, he needs to be shouted down. He needs to be put back on his heels and put in his place. I mean him of all people should set a certain standard in the House. He should set a certain way of behaving that all of us in Canada can be proud of and he shamed us all.”

NDP Leader Jack Layton ended up playing the role of adult:

“It was a bad week. I think if the Canadian people had been able to watch the full goings-on, I think they would have been very discouraged and distressed. The kinds of partial half-truths accusations flying back and forth, the yelling, the shouting, even the speaker had to take the right of a party that was raising a ruckus away. So it is time to get back to recognize that we need some decorum, that everyone in that House deserves respect because Canadians sent them there.”

But back to the history books —

Liberal MP Maria Minna had this question in the House of Commons Friday:

Hon. Maria Minna (Beaches—East York, Lib.): 
    Mr. Speaker, Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's Nobel Peace Prize, earned for his peacekeeping interventions during the 1956 Suez crisis, has been hidden for the foreign affairs minister's press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Such action is a disgrace and an embarrassment. This attempt to hide the past just highlights the Conservative Party's abandonment of Canada's peacekeeping role.

    Why are the Conservatives so overly partisan that they cannot even recognize such great Canadian accomplishments?

We went out and answered that one for her:

…CTV News has learned that the Pearson display was routinely hidden by backdrops set up for the press conferences of Liberal ministers during the governments of Paul Martin and Jean Chretien.

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