Perhaps, like first and second generation Canadians void European heritage, the Tories feel at home in the nation's capital. After all, they've been there for years. They live there for most of the calendar year, they work there and they even attend mass there.
Suddenly, like a fly in the ointment, an utterance from a local has rattled their cages and shattered their sense of belonging. What a surprise to be told to "go home" after being integrated into the fabric of one's environment! One wonders how that must feel...
Calgary-born MP Pierre Poilevre called David McGuinty's comments "shocking" while Calgary Tory MP Michelle Rempel challenged McGuinty to make the comments to her face in the House.
Wouldn't you love to have a survey of Alberta's ethno-cultural communities and francophone communities to see how often some Conservative tells him to "go home" because they don't belong there.
The notion that this comment gave Tory MPs a burr under their saddles -- so vexed are they by the comment they so habitually spew -- sounds quite hypocritical to those who are usually on the receiving end of the contempt the Alberta bunch has shown for minorities, immigrants, refugees and francophone Canadians both in and outside La Belle Province.
It is the Tories who have repeatedly told immigrants to 'go home', going so far as exerting two federal departments to look for immigration fraud needles in haystacks of upstanding new Canadians.
It is the Tories who have repeatedly belittled francophones by slowly choking their equal status from the Auditor General's office and the Supreme Court.
It is the Tories who have repeatedly told refugees to "go home" sick, or worse, to go back to their war-torn, torture-endorsing homelands or the overflowing death-traps called refugee camps.
What can one expect from a cluster genetically linked to the Canadian Reform Alliance Party - a party of francophobes, xenophobes and those obsessed with retaining Canada's "traditional" culture.
Perhaps this oh-so-traumatic experience will give Tories reason to pause the next time they throw those familiar stones.
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Every time I contemplate how Alberta has given away its oil wealth for a tiny mess of potage and is now having its beautiful landscape ruined I want to cry. All that wealth and it is broke. I don’t think those MPs care about Alberta either. Their loyalty is to the oil companies.
Or when you check out the "Chroniqueurs" on Radio-Canada's most popular radio show, C'est bien meilleur les blancs: http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/cest_bien_meilleur_le_matin/2012-2013/index.asp
Rentrez chez vous, perhaps?
http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/cest_bien_meilleur_le_matin/2012-2013/chroniqueur.asp?chroniqueur=dick_howard
But if there's anything that gets up my nose, it's listening to someone crap on one group to 'defend' another while smugly patting herself on the back for being an uber-accepting liberal. Shows a staggering ignorance and lack of more than headline-level thought.
It may be a stretch but the tories are probably just trying to score political points by making their divisive fuss
And it's utter rubbish, the typical puerile stupidity that is so common in Canada today.