John Tory’s a walking gong show

Can somebody please pinch me ? Only days after I wondered out loud whether John Tory might destroy his second PC Party, I see that he is threatening to suspend MPPs who "misbehave...without pay". This suggestion is full of both horrible philosophical problems and foolish political miscalculations.

In Parliament, there used to be a concept that MPs or MPPs could expel another member. In Britain, this was occasionally used to punish MPs for crimes, but also blasphemy, issuing a pamphlet in favour of the Hanoverian succession, radical journalism, refusal to take a religious oath of allegiance and accusations against other members. It was was most notably used in Canada to expel Louis Riel twice (page 5). I think that example alone is enough to prove that such a power can be misused for political purposes. Do we really want to create a situation where a government majority can vote to expel a member of the opposition for "misbehaving" ? Even if the speaker makes such a decision, the speaker is almost always from the government ! Nobody who would seriously contemplate bringing back the use of this power in any circumstances other than the commission of a crime, even if only to "suspend", should be premier.

In a purely political sense, I think this suggestion is foolish. Last week, we saw John Tory complain about a third party campaigning against him (note that they are not campaigning to vote Liberal, only to not vote Tory). This week, John Tory got "testy" because he didn’t like the reasonable questions that journalists were asking him. Now he’s going around whining about "misbehaving" MPPs. I don’t think it is going to take very long for him to look like some stuck up rich boy who thinks he’s better than everybody else.

I am aware that I may seem to be doing what the federal Tories tried to do to Dion. I didn’t like it when they did it, though, so I have asked myself how my comments are different. I do think there is a difference because I am not taking a comment in a debate out of context to make it seem like Tory said something that he did not say. Tory’s words and meaning are right there in plain sight for all to see. He has complained about a third party opposing him while accepting third party support from others, he has been described as "bristling" and "testy" by the media and he has now proposed an undemocratic policy to punish other elected politicians for "misbehaving". I’m not doing anything to make John Tory look bad ; he’s doing it to himself.