The most awkward moment of the 41st Parliament

Sticking to a script has been maligned of late, but sometimes it might actually help things. Case in point: Wednesday.

It started with a point of order from Bloc Québécois MP André Bellavance, who wanted an apology from Jim Hillyer for hand gestures he made during the House vote on Bill C-19, the legislation that effectively ended the gun registry.

Hillyer, some might recall, is the Conservative MP for Lethbridge who was mostly invisible during the election. At the time, according to The Globe and Mail, he earned the name The Man Who Wasn’t There “from a local newspaper after failing to show up at a pair of debates, repeatedly refusing interview requests and declining to speak to a local blogger who used Twitter to track him down while he was door knocking.”

During the vote on C-19 on Nov. 1, Hillyer pointed his fingers in a gun-like fashion and waved them up and down. A video of it was posted Tuesday, the 22nd anniversary of the shootings at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique. The gun registry, lest we forget, was established by the Chrétien government as a direct result of that event.

Bellavance wondered whether Hillyer might apologize.

What followed was perhaps one of the more awkward events of the session.

“Mr. Speaker, the video was released yesterday on the anniversary of the tragic events at the École Polytechnique, and that is what is tragic,” Hillyer began in halting, ham-fisted cadence.

“The vote occurred five weeks before and had absolutely nothing to do with these tragic events, absolutely nothing to do with it,” he continued. “The gesture was not made towards anyone. It was not even made towards the colleagues I faced in the Conservative Party. It has nothing to do with the victims of violence.”

Hillyer also argued that if ending the gun registry was a vote for violence, then the gesture would have been offensive. That wasn’t the case, according to him.

Then, for good measure, he reminded the House that the gun registry actually targeted law-abiding gun owners. He was sorry, he continued, that the gesture had been misinterpreted “to be at all associated with the tragic events at École Polytechnique 22 years ago.”

New Democrat MP Françoise Boivin stood then and reminded the House of a ruling the Speaker made the day before, where he specifically mentioned the recent slew of inappropriate gestures and clapping that kept occurring during votes. This was one of these totally inappropriate gestures, she said.

Liberal interim leader Bob Rae then stood up and offered a solution: Why couldn’t Hillyer just recognize the solemnity of the situation and apologize to the House?

During this time, Hillyer sat in conversation with Government House Leader Peter Van Loan, who had walked across the floor to Hillyer’s desk in order to advise him on what one could have assumed would be a cogent response that, given the awkward circumstances, would possibly allow him to sidestep the issue and still hold firm on the government’s victory.

As Rae finished his statement, Hillyer stood up. Across the floor, however, his whip, Gordon O’Connor, had also risen.

Going first, O’Connor reminded the Speaker that Hillyer had “pointed out that the vote occurred weeks before yesterday when the video was shown. Somebody maliciously set the video up for yesterday.” But O’Connor was willing to concede some ground on behalf of his fellow MP.

“However, regardless, if people anywhere are offended by that action, I apologize,” O’Connor said.

Then, somewhat amazingly, it really got a lot worse. Because Hillyer stood again and delivered a meandering, sweaty, quasi-apology to the House.

It went like this:

“Mr. Speaker, it was mentioned that yesterday you made a ruling on decorum during votes. The ruling was made yesterday. It is true that I am new in the House. I have only been to about 100 votes or so and I have seen many members make different gestures while they vote. That was before the ruling.
You have made the ruling, Mr. Speaker, that we should not applaud during votes and I will accept that ruling. I will not be making gestures during votes of any nature from this point on. I respect that. I think that the offence occurred because someone took this video in an appropriate way and was the person who connected this gesture to the victims of violence. That is deeply regrettable.”

He was cut off then by NDP and Liberal members who by that point weren’t so much shouting him down as recommending that he take O’Connor’s lead and simply apologize as well, perhaps for no other reason than to alleviate some of the discomfort — a balm solution.

For the feeling in the House by that point, witnessed live by only a handful of members and two journalists, was bordering on squeamish — a sort of overall wincing pity for a man clearly stuck in a muddy bog of jumbled talking points and a reluctance to concede ground.

But on he marched.

“Mr. Speaker, if I had intended to offend victims of violence or anyone else, that would not only demand an apology but it would demand far worse than just that. No offence was intended. No one who looks at the video and the timing of the video would think for a second that I intended any offence toward victims of violence. The people who caused the offence are the people who connected the video on the wrong day, and that is terrible.
I am sorry that I did not follow the ruling that you, Mr. Speaker, have made since then. I will not make gestures anymore. I have nothing but sympathy for victims of violence. I continue to remain committed to ending violence toward women and all Canadians.”

With that, the Speaker rose and somewhat thankfully told the House, “we can consider the matter closed.”

“The member has indicated that he will respect the Speaker’s ruling going forward and certainly seems to have indicated regret that anybody may have taken offence at that,” he finished.

Origin
Source: iPolitico