Friday, January 13, 2006

From The Starship Enterprise

Barry Devolin could not have chosen a funnier line to introduce himself. The situation was a political debate hosted by the Islamic Foundation. It included the Joe Volpe, the current Immigration minister from the Liberals and Joe Comartin from the NDP. Peter MacKay, the deputy leader of the Conservatives, was also supposed to be there. Instead, he could not make it, and sent his deputy, Barry Devolin.

And Mr. Devolin opened with "Hi. I bring greetings to you from my leader ..."

As soon as he said that, some people from the back started to snicker. Honestly, it was a very funny, extremely funny, way to introduce oneself.

"I bring greetings to you from my leader ..."

Someone from the back mouthed, "... leader Stephen Harper, Captain of the starship Enterprise, from the planet Zambooka!"

Actually, I am just being mean and having a laugh at his expense - he looked like a really decent guy and spoke quite well too, even though he had obviously been asked to do this at the last minute. He also reflected for a need of diversity, of a balance between security and civil liberties, and corruption in Ottawa. In all honesty, he brought salutations to us from Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay.

But still "I bring greetings to you from my leader ..." was just too funny to hear.

Links: (Toronto Star) Muslims `targeted', debate hears


Islamic Foundation: The venue of the debate.

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2 comments:

Masti-boy said...

So did you accept those greetings?

mezba said...

The debate had many muslim issues, but on most issues the NDP (and the Greens) were found to be in sync with the muslim issues. They are against security cerificate and ATA (which detail people for years without any trial), they were against a no-fly list that targets Muslims, and they are against racial discrimination. The Liberal Volpe faced a lot of heckling (which I think was rude). The Conservative guy spoke about reviewing the ATA and replacing the one judge with a panel of judges, and was otherwise not too instrumental anyways. He merely repeated his talking points. Only on the issue of same sex marriage did he get any traction.

Overall the NDP won the debate comprehensively. They are the party who gets the best of Liberal values, Muslim values and is a political force to do something about it.