General

Strange words, Mr. Mulcair

Outremont NDP MP Thomas Mulcair was just on CBC’s Power and Politics in a rollicking good spar with Andrew Coyne.  Mr. Mulcair, you’ll recall, helped draft the Bloc Québécois motion expressing  ”profound sadness at the prejudice” of Maclean’s recent cover story on Quebec. During the course of the debate, Mr. Mulcair made two very odd pronouncements.

1) that the article I wrote only quoted one person, historian Samuel Huntington.

This is demonstrably false. As anyone with eyes and the ability to read can surmise, I quote from a number of sources whom I interviewed. To wit: Business ethics professor Andrew Stark, Réseau Liberté-Québec’s Éric Duhaime, Québec Solidaire MNA Amir Khadir and Liberal MNA Geoff Kelley–with whom Mulcair served when he was in Jean Charest’s government.

The article further quoted, with attribution to the sources, the testimony of Marc Bellemare, Auditor-General Sheila Fraser, The Cliche Commission report, Gazette political writer  Hubert Bauch, author and Conservative insider L. Ian Macdonald, Le Devoir’s Jean Dion and Conservative MP Jean-Pierre Blackburn.

2) that during the course of a recent phone call with me, I informed him of the magazine’s intentions to write what he referred to as a “hatchet job” on Quebec.

Quite simply, this conversation never occurred. The last time I spoke with Mr. Mulcair was on March 4, 2010, for a piece I wrote on Anglophone rights. I sent him an email on April 16, 2010 asking for comment on the Quebec budget. He didn’t respond. It was the last time I attempted to talk to him.

How bizarre.

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