Canadian politics was awful this week

It was an awful week in Canadian federal politics.

That wasn’t only because MPs realized to their shock and disgust that they had honoured — not just once but twice, through standing ovations last Friday — Yaroslav Hunka, a man who fought with the Nazis, and hurt Canada’s efforts to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, by handing the Russians ammunition in their disinformation campaign while insulting Jewish Canadians and our war veterans.

It was awful because it took too long for House Speaker Anthony Rota to realize the gravity of his mistake, wrongly assuming that a simple apology (“I have subsequently become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision to do so”) would be sufficient to restore the trust he’d shattered with members of Parliament, and the international embarrassment he’d caused Canada and Ukraine.

It was awful because too few parliamentarians rushed to apologize for their own actions — including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — until the Speaker had accepted responsibility and announced his resignation (and only after all parties called on him to do so). Thankfully, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, Conservative MP Dan Albas and Health Minister Mark Holland were among the few who did so.

In an embarrassing feature perhaps of our time, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre argued he had no business apologizing because he was not responsible for his own actions. “Absolutely not,” he told my colleague Stephanie Levitz. “Sitting on the floor of the House of Commons with less than a millisecond to do any vetting? What would you have us do? Open up our phones and do a Google search on this person whose name was suddenly and spontaneously mentioned from the front of the room? Impossible.”

On Monday in the House of Commons, Calgary MP Michelle Rempel Garner wouldn’t atone for her actions, either, and also cast blame on the government. “I refuse, as a member of this place who represents 120,000 Canadians, to collectively share responsibility with a government that has a pattern of not vetting questionable individuals,” she said.

It was awful because too few acknowledged the deeper meaning of what happened last Friday, that not enough Canadians understand and know their history — the history of the Second World War, but also of Canada’s own past of tolerating antisemitism and welcoming thousands of Nazis to our country.

It was awful because Conservatives

used the occasion to try to score political points through misinformation, personally laying blame at the feet of the Prime Minister’s Office for an error that ultimately was the Speaker’s. Poilievre and others made claims that they ought to know are untrue, such as the role of the RCMP in vetting the suitability of the Speaker’s guests. They conflated the roles and responsibilities of the government and the legislature during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to fit their own purposes, perhaps harming the understanding of both in the mind of the public.

It was awful because Conservatives tried to politicize the role of the Speaker of the House of Commons, thereby making the job that much harder for whoever is elected next week as Rota’s successor. The Speaker — a member of Parliament who no longer attends party caucus meetings — must be seen to be independent to garner the confidence of all MPs. The Speaker is not only the referee of question period, but frequently decides which MPs’ rights have been infringed, what punishment should be bestowed on misbehaving members, and can issue rulings that make the government’s life miserable or save it from embarrassment.

It was awful because instead of seeking to address last Friday’s error and work together, as the Bloc Québécois and, to a lesser extent, the NDP sought to do, Conservative MPs ramped up the level of toxicity in the chamber.

In one particular egregious exchange, Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman accused Government House Leader Karina Gould, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, of “distorting the Holocaust” for seeking to strike Hunka’s recognition from the record “as if it never happened.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Lantsman yelled.

But what Gould was asking for is not uncommon. MPs are given rough transcripts every day of their interventions in the chamber and in committees, and can change words before the official record is published. (I find this personally very troubling, but it is a practice that has been in place for decades. It’s why Hansard is the “official report” and not a verbatim transcript of audio and video records.)

It was awful because it took too long for Trudeau to issue an apology, both to Ukraine and Canadians, for what had happened — and when he finally did, in question period while the opposition heckled, it lacked the sombreness and seriousness the moment required.

And it remains awful because, as I write this on Friday afternoon, the prime minister still has yet to personally reach out to Zelenskyy and apologize. Nor has Trudeau personally reached out to leaders of the Jewish community.

It was a dark moment and a week that made that moment even darker.