W
ith reference to the profile of the Liberal candidate, Renee Miller, (The News of April 5), it is notable that she is giving emphasis to the contempt of Parliament vote that precipitated the current election campaign.
She said, “Knowing the Harper government is the only one in the history of the Commonwealth to be held in contempt of Parliament really bothers me.”
Why did this happen? Because Mr. Harper had a minority government and the opposition decided to gang up on it to force an election that they wanted.
With respect to contempt of Parliament, is Ms. Miller unaware of the Long Gun Registry fiasco, or did she just choose to ignore it? This was a far more egregious example of contempt of Parliament, performed by Jean Chretien and his Liberal government. To cover the runaway costs of the gun registry, where a presumed project cost of $87-million ballooned to about $200-million, Mr. Chretien compelled his ministries to secretly flow some of their budgets into the project costs and then reported fabricated costs to Parliament. Now that’s contempt of Parliament!
But the Chretien government was not found guilty of its sins because it had the pleasure of a majority in the House of Commons. And there are other examples of contempt of Parliament by Liberal governments that could be cited, such as slipping the faint hope clause into the legislation defining life sentences for prisoners which had been agreed within the House after long, divisive debate.
So, considering these facts, Ms. Miller should really select a more substantive topic to emphasize in her campaign.
Ralph Moore
Qualicum Beach
