Bill Casey is not cut from the same cloth as Garth Turner, but let's not kid ourselves into believing that he has sacrificed his political career to the dictates of conscience.
Casey's plans to retire at the next election have been an open secret for months; to grandstand on a budget vote costs him nothing except ending his career with a brief stint outside caucus.
Nor does his vote against a confidence motion make him a martyr for the cause of freer votes in Parliament: not even the most enthusiastic boosters of free range MPs have ever suggested that a government MP should be free to vote no confidence in his own government. Were it to be so, not even a majority government could survive without endlessly brokering side deals with its own caucus.
Had Bill Casey simply not shown up that night, few would have cared about his abstention after the vote, and he could have got the point across without being turfed from caucus.
Nothing turned on his vote and nothing will turn on it.
The offshore deal will fail, as have all other such deals, because the dynamic of federal-provincial relations between Ottawa and Atlantic Canada, that of grudging charity to an incessantly whining supplicant, will not change any time soon.
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In Parliament's question period on Wednesday, NDP Leader Jack Layton quoted Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay as saying last month: "'We will not throw a member out of caucus for voting his conscience. There will be no firings on budget votes as we saw with the Liberal government'."
I'm wondering what your reasoning is behind your judgement that Bill Casey is not sacrificing his political life as a matter of conscience. I would argue that the fact that he is retiring from politics could also be evaluated as an argument in favour of that assumption. Why rock the boat when you retire?
Believe me, I'm not a particular fan of Bill Casey, but if it's a matter of conscience, that's what it is. It doesn't make him a hero, but it doesn't make him any kind of opportunist, either. If he's retiring then he's not risking his skin in the next election by running for a party that's becoming unpopular in Nova Scotia.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Behind Bars, Before The Bar
Believe it or not, even the Bar has some standards for joining it. Something about not bringing the profession into disrepute.
Stop snickering.
Even the Quebec Bar didn't want this guy, but may be forced to take him:
He left the country after being repeatedly denied enrolment in the Quebec bar admission course because he stabbed his mother to death when he was younger. But Sébastien Brousseau has finally prevailed in his decade-long campaign for the right to become a lawyer.
The Quebec bar says it will not appeal a decision this spring by a panel of judges who ruled that Mr. Brousseau is sufficiently rehabilitated that he can practise law without hurting the reputation of the legal profession.
....
Mr. Brousseau was 21 when he killed his mother, Micheline Sévigny, in their home near Montreal, stabbing her 40 times. According to psychiatric assessments cited in court documents, his parents had separated and he lived with his mother, often feuding with her.
The night of Nov. 16, 1990, according to his account to a psychiatrist, Mr. Brousseau got into an argument with his mother and she swung at him with a baseball bat.
He said he remembered defending himself with a kitchen knife but did not recall how often he stabbed her. He said that she was in agony when he came to his senses, so he slit her throat to end her suffering.
Despite the lurid details of the slaying, the ruling noted that the Crown changed the indictment against him from murder to manslaughter, on the advice of psychiatric experts.
After being paroled in 1992, Mr. Brousseau attended law school. By the time of his fourth attempt to register in the bar exam school in 2001, he had obtained a pardon.
A pardon may wipe away a criminal record and all of the usual consequences of having one, but it cannot undo a man's past.
The absence of a criminal record is neither sufficient nor necessary proof of good character, according to just about any Bar.
Had Brousseau's past offences been fraud or any other breach of trust, the Bar would never have given him a chance. Even if he had only faced civil judgments for same, and never any criminal indictments.
Had his crime been drunk driving, the Bar wouldn't have cared as long as he hadn't killed or maimed anyone.
In any event, his may be a hollow victory yet. The Bar can close ranks against anyone with a firmness and discipline even the Mob would envy. He may have to be admitted to bar school, but no firm is obligated to hire him for articles, without which he cannot be called.
And even if he should find and complete articles, he will still have to demonstrate that he is of good character, to the Bar's satisfaction, again.
And it will find any excuse to keep him out, now.
But even if, despite all this, he is admitted, no firm in Quebec will obligated to hire him, nor the Bar help him hang out his own shingle.
When the Bar wants you out, it will move heaven and earth to keep you out.
Source: Globe and Mail
Posted by Loyalist at 7:10 AM
67 comments:
Anonymous said...
Thanks. I will try to prove you wrong. By the way, I already did my exams and have a job.
Sebastien Brousseau.
7/11/2006 11:57 PM
I'm wondering what your reasoning is behind your judgement that Bill Casey is not sacrificing his political life as a matter of conscience. I would argue that the fact that he is retiring from politics could also be evaluated as an argument in favour of that assumption. Why rock the boat when you retire?
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