Claire Hoy — Talk about a double standard!

May 1, 2013 · 0 Comments

There is no real need to bore you with countless examples of the media piling on whenever a Conservative politicians dares to say something – anything – about such controversial social issues as abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment.
It is standard fare that whenever it happens, the media – along with left-wing activists groups and the other political parties – immediately get on their collective high horse and declare that those dreaded Tories are not only extreme, they’re downright dangerous.
Not only that, they have a “hidden agenda” – so hidden, apparently, that even Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn’t know what it is, since he’s had several years to impose it – and in order to save the country and save democracy – and perhaps the world as we know it – we should all be aware of those extremists who occupy the Tory benches in Ottawa.
When a couple of Tory MPs, for example, posited the notion that perhaps it’s not a good idea for parents to abort their unborn children because they happen to be girls and not boys – a notion supported by an overwhelming number of Canadians in public opinion polls – they are once again attacked as extremist out to impose their “hidden agenda” on the rest of us.
And it’s not just them.
The media tends to extrapolate all “extreme” views expressed by any Tory anywhere to represent the entire Tory Party, whether it does or not. (And by the way, polls continue to show that about half of all Canadians, sometimes more, have no problem with a law that would put some restrictions on abortion, say after the first semester. There’s no stomach for an abortion ban, but plenty of support for some kind of restrictions.)
It all gets a bit tiring and, given the results of the last few elections – and the likely results of the next one – it’s not a notion that most Canadians subscribe to.
But it is fair to point out that when members of other parties say or do something that is truly extreme, the tendency in the media is to give them a free pass.
A great example of this habit arose in news stories last month citing the writings of Quebec NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice, who represents Rosemont-LaPetite Pafrie. The writings, about six years earlier in a left-wing Quebec blog, dumped on Canadians who fought in the First World War, a war he characterized as “a purely capitalist war on the backs of the workers and peasants.”
For anybody who knows anything about Boulerice, this should not be a major surprise.
He is, after all, a self-admitted communist, a position which, it seems to me, makes him an extremist by definition. But you wouldn’t know that if you, like me, follow the comings and goings of Parliament on a regular basis.
Those Tories who want to do something about abortion – and don’t like the idea that Canada is the only democratic country in the world with absolutely no abortion law at all – are routinely dismissed as extremists.
But Boulerice, a former television journalist and (naturally) union official, who adheres to communism and insults hundreds of thousands of brave Canadians who either gave their lives or risked their lives in the fight for freedom, was essentially let off the hook when news of his earlier writings came to pass.
Some will say that since he wrote this in 2007 – where he claimed “the only ones to have refused this butchery, to have rejected the call of the ‘sacred union’ within each nation, were communist activists” – have claimed that it is unfair now to bring it forward.
No it’s not. It’s perfectly fair to find something somebody wrote as an adult and then ask if they still subscribe to that view or if there is another explanation. More to the point, whenever a Tory says something the media considers “extreme” they immediately descend upon Harper demanding an explanation or punishment or something. Yet these same guardians of truth and justice simply let NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair ignore the whole thing. Nice.
We are supposed to be satisfied that Mulcair, on the recent anniversary of Vimy Ridge – the battle that all historians agree was when Canada came of age as an independent nation – praising the “tremendous bravery…” our Canadian soldiers.
But one may wonder how sincere his thoughts are if he has in his caucus a man who, apparently with no consequences whatsoever, denigrates brave Canadians and praises radical communists for their refusal to fight a totalitarian movement.
Talk about a double standard. Wow!