Ottawa

Occupy Parliament

Noting the campaign against Irwin Cotler and the general state of the House, former Liberal MP Glen Pearson challenges this Parliament.

Do today’s MPs have the courage to stand with the House of the people against their own political masters when the occasion demands it? To date the answer would have to be a clear “no”. Perhaps what they require is the courage, mustered by their own citizens and constituents, to do the honourable thing and stop silently condoning what surely must be one of the saddest eras in Canada’s parliamentary democracy.

It is surely time for our federal political representatives to occupy the very House their constituents voted them in to. As Edmund Burke famously put it, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” I have learned that good men and women occupy the House of Commons. They question now is: will they at last show up to rescue Parliament from its more debased instincts and speak for us?

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