Here are a a couple of pictures I took on the Berrycam. Doing a quick count, I estimated that 130 – 150 people congregated outside of Colin Carrie’s office in downtown Oshawa.
The overwhelming message? It seemed to me that there were a few.1. That the House of Commons belongs to us: the Commoners. Stephen Harper cannot simply treat it as his own, and discard it whenever it no longer suits his own self-interested purposes.2. With a strong labour background, the idea of merely skipping work when the going gets tough was highly offensive to many Oshawanians, as was the news that a number of Parliamentary staff were laid off because Harper couldn’t juggle facing tough questions, preparing a budget, and attending Olympic photo-ops over a three month period.3. That while we are “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament” we are, more importantly, Canadians FOR accountable and responsible government. I had the honour to address the crowd very briefly, and that was the message I shared with assembly. Of course, it was not my message – that is, it was not a message born in my own head – but it was the message I felt and heard from everyone with whom I spoke at the rally. Demanding accountable and responsible government was for everyone the purpose of being there; for everyone the reason for belonging to the CAPP group in the first place. The other theme to which I briefly spoke – again, not my message, but ours – was the notion of leadership, and what our expectations are in this regard. Again, the message I heard from participants was clear: we want leadership on all issues, across the board. We want leadership on the easy issues, and on the tough ones. We want a government that tackles the major problems; not simply those that they consider to be priorities based on their own ideology. We want – and deserve – a government that takes on problems of the people, not merely those problems that will make the government look good should they find even modest success. In other words: enough of the games; we want good governance.Whose House?OUR HOUSE!Now get back to work.
