by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
November 9, 2004
Last week Rookie Bloc Quebecois MP andre Bellavance made headlines when he refused to provide a Canadian flag to a veterans’ group that was located in his riding. His reason--he’s a separatist. “as a Bloc Quebecois MP, I don’t feel the obligation to distribute Canadian flags,” Bellavance told the media.
Conservative leader Stephen Harper was first off the mark. Finding himself in the Province of Quebec, the Conservative leader travelled to Richmond in Bellavance’s riding and provided the vets with 10 Canadian flags.
Harper’s gesture apparently was enough to get Prime Minister Paul Martin going and he sent the veterans the flag that flies on the Peace Tower in Ottawa.
This is not the first time that the Liberal government has done something only after the leader of the opposition has acted. Former PM Jean Chrtien showed absolutely no desire to visit Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks until then Opposition Leader Stockwell Day announced that he was going.
The CBC used Harper’s providing the flags in Quebec to show the Conservative leader in that province and then went on about how little support Harper has in Quebec and how he will never become prime minister because of the lack of support that the Tories have there. The CBC piece did not say, but implied that the only reason Stephen Harper was providing the vets with the flags was to try and bolster support for his party in Quebec. Mother Corp. just couldn’t resist an excuse to say why Harper will not be able to win a future election.
When reporting on Prime Minister Martin’s donation of the Peace Tower Flag, 680 News, Toronto’s all news station, (that should be all Liberal news station) ended its piece with an oh by-the-way, Stephen Harper also provided flags as if Harper’s gesture followed that of the prime minister.
Very few media reported, as did the Toronto Sun, that andre Bellavance was not the first MP that thinks that he can pick and choose which constituents he can provide services for. Liberal MP Tom Wappel refused to help a disabled 81-year-old veteran in his riding because the vet had the nerve to vote for someone else. and Wappel didn’t even have the guise of a principled argument of why he refused to help one of his constituents.
Stephen Harper’s actions in providing flags for the Quebec vets enabled some of the anti-Conservative media to either marginalize his actions in relation to those of Fearful Leader or to gloat about how he won’t ever be able to win Quebec.