The recently-installed Liberal speaker of the House of Commons, Greg Fergus, annoyed Conservatives who were desperate to get to their favourite pastime of tearing strips off Justin Trudeau, when he interrupted Question Time to give a much-needed homily about decorum in Parliament.
It's ironic that his request for attention was rudely interrupted by - who else? - Pierre Poilievre, who kvetched that the Speaker could have made his point at any other time, rather that eating into the valuable Question Time time that he uses for his ad hominem attacks on the Prime Minister.
As usual, Poilievre missed the point. The point of Fergus's address was to denounce the "boorish and rude" heckling that goes on in Parliament. (If you've ever listened to recordings, you will know exactly what he means - quite frankly, it's embarrassing.) "Latitude in expressing one's point of view will be given", he intoned, "but questionable language and unnecessarily provocative statements will no longer be tolerated". Well, good luck with that, Mr. Fergus.
He also called out the increasing tendency towards parliamentary behaviour that is "unnecessarily personal, and designed to denigrate, bully, elicit an emotional reaction, or to attack the integrity of the person", as well as the growing propensity for shaming Members of Parliament by drawing attention to their absence (Poilievre does this all the time).
Kudos to Mr. Fergus for laying out the rules (which members should already know, but so often ignore) as he starts his tenure as Speaker. It will be interesting to see whether he can in fact hold offending members to account. No other speaker has managed to.
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