Wow! Two startling revelations in that headline!
Today, the Liberal-friendly CTV.ca, in an online story (and I use the word “story” advisedly) about an exchange in the house today, set forth a version of events which I found terribly lacking in, well, the truth (to put it kindly), because the truth includes telling the whole story and setting the context of events fairly and with a sense of balance.
So it needs the fair and balanced review of yours truly or somebody—anybody—because it just doesn’t serve the Canadian public very well if the story is overtly wrong and biased against the Conservatives. They may not care about that but I do. But this is all very common and it’s what we’ve come to realize is perfectly understandable given their Liberal*Vision definition of “objective”.
Their headline, with its typo and all, is: PM dimisses [sic] Tory questioning as ‘gamesmanship’, so right away you can see that they’ve set it up to be defensive of their beloved Prime Minister. It turns out that the whole point of the story (if you have all the facts and the context) is that the Prime Minister was caught playing political games, and “Tory” Harper called him on it. The headline would set it up so that history was exactly ass-backwards. Conservative leader Stephen Harper—it seems to me—caught the Prime Minister in an petty little lie, and caught the PM using the families of the four slain RCMP officers (from this past spring in Alberta) as pure political gamesmanship, in our House of Commons.
They wrote:
In his opening salvo, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper made clear his displeasure with the PM.
“The prime minister told the House in response that he had ‘met the families and had long discussions.’ The families told us afterwards that no such discussions took place,” Harper said, demanding to know why the prime minister would “mislead the House”.
But that was NOT his opening “salvo”. His opening remarks were this, to be perfectly honest—and being his “opening salvo”, it’s clearly important to set it up properly—you know, for fairness’ sake and for the sake of honesty:
Mr. Speaker yesterday I told the Prime Minister that the families of the four slain RCMP officers were in Ottawa to make a passionate plea for criminal justice reform. The PM told the house in response that he (quote) had “met the families” and had had “long discussions”. The families told us afterwards that no discussions took place. They were in the galleries—I’m wondering why the PM would mislead the families and mislead the house in this way.
Compare the two versions. That first sentence in the actual factual version is rather important to the context. Their version sets it up completely differently. More Liberal-friendly, and more thems neo-cons is wacky-like.
The problem with actual FACTS, for liberals, is that they so often get in the way of a good anti-conservative biased story. So that might explain their mendacity above, and what follows.
They said Mr. Martin’s response was:
“I said I was in Alberta for the memorial. I met with each of the families at that time and I met with them individually and discussed this,” he responded. “I did have discussions with each family in Alberta at that time, and that’s a matter of public record.”
See how that first sentence would have been handy?
And they didn’t bother typing half of Mr. Martin’s actual answer, which was replete with “oh this was a terrible event” and other such tangents from the actual point. But the germane fact is that he’s actually changed his story, saying that he’d said only that he’d met with them in Alberta, and discussed things with them way back then—at the funeral in March—and that that’s what he’d meant when he said he’d met with them and had discussions with them yesterday while they were in Ottawa. Which is the political gamesmanship thing. Which HE played—not Mr. Harper.
They then said that this occurred:
When Harper rose to ask for Martin to give the families an apology, the prime minister offered a sharp response.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for the member to make political gamesmanship on such an emotional event,” Martin said, insisting he would be happy to meet with any of the families.
“I would be delighted to do so today, but surely to heaven this is not the kind of issue that the Honourable member ought to play politics with.”
… but they forgot to type out just what Mr. Harper said “[w]hen Harper rose to ask for Martin to give the families an apology”! Oops!
So let me help you out, in the interest of the truth and fairness and non-liberal-friendly facts:
A brief condolence at a reception does not constitute a long and serious discussion and I can tell the Prime Minister that the families certainly do not consider that they have had any such kind of meeting or discussion with the Prime Minister so could the Prime Minister simply—regardless of how we choose to phrase this—I can assure the Prime Minister that these families are deeply upset, feel deeply mislead, and will he apologize to them?
This almost makes Mr. Harper sound like he’s catching the Prime Minister in a lie! Too bad the CTV.ca budget for typewriter ribbon is so meager, because that would have helped clarify the “political gamesmanship” angle, and who was actually playing it.
They found some extra typewriter ribbon in a closet somewhere however, just as they needed to add some more of Mr. Martin’s accusations against the evil Harper of “playing politics”:
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for the member to make political gamesmanship on such an emotional event,” Martin said, insisting he would be happy to meet with any of the families.
“I would be delighted to do so today, but surely to heaven this is not the kind of issue that the Honourable member ought to play politics with.”
But then they ran out again! Mr. Harper then rose and stated for the record that the families had told a completely different version of events to him and his colleagues, than that of Prime Minister and what he said in the House.
This is what you missed (you too, CTV staff!). This is what Mr. Harper said:
Well Mr. Speaker, I can assure you that the families have told us they wanted us to raise this in the house today and I am proud to do it on their behalf.
I’m told also that the Prime Minister was asked to meet with the families yesterday but chose not to do that….
So that means that Mr. Harper was by definition not playing “political games” and was simply doing the honorable thing. Damn facts! Am I right liberals?
And so they engage in re-writing history a tiny bit.
By the way, Martin never apologized to the families, not even just in the off-chance he was wrong. Nor did he apologize to the Leader of the Opposition for wrongly accusing him of playing political games, as he was doing himself; and of course he did not apologize to the House for his little fib that he got caught making.
It’s a matter of principle with him, apparently, to be consistently in the wrong.
You can watch/listen to it right here.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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