Poilievre replies and I laugh

For those of you who asked me to keep you posted on whether Pierre Poilievre replied to my letter which appears in this blog on April 28th, he did. But quite expectedly, the reply was less than useless. Instead of addressing my concerns Mr. Poilievre simply quotes himself at length from House of Commons records. And the pieces he quotes didn't even address the events that I had specifically talked about. So it goes. I here post my reply to his reply. 

Dear Mr. Poilievre 

In reply to my letter of April 28^th you failed utterly to address my concerns. Instead of making a serious reply to my various charges against you, you simply chose to give me a recitation of some of your words from the House of Commons. Now besides the sad and obvious fact that only an extreme egotist would compose a letter consisting almost entirely of self-quotation, you even failed to address the actual events that I had raised. 

Your reply demonstrated that you failed entirely to understand that what I was pointing to was an overall pattern of petty, abusive, childish, and ultra-partisan behavior on your part. Politics should always be about ‘building people up’ not tearing them down, and your behavior in and out of the House has consistently done the later. You quote yourself as saying that “it is very important that people in this chamber conduct themselves in a way that make their constituents proud.” Now, overlooking the obvious grammatical error in this statement, I must point out that you certainly do not appear to live by this adage in your professional conduct.  

The most astute thing you stated in your letter was the observation that you are “not right all of the time.” Indeed you are correct in this claim. And let me point out the most obvious mistake in your letter. Again quoting yourself, you write, “What is key in our democracy is that the people are sovereign.” Again, overlooking the rather awkward grammar, this statement demonstrates that you don’t even understand the very political system under which you serve. We live in a ‘constitutional monarchy,’ and in such a system sovereignty flows downward from the Queen (or King) through the Governor General and to the House of Commons. Sovereignty is a Middle-English word which means ‘pre-eminence’ or absolute authority. And in a constitutional monarchy this pre-eminence is in the hands of the Monarch. Thus, people often use the word monarch and sovereign interchangeably. In our political system the people are not, as you claim, sovereign. You are simply wrong and the fact that your Prime Minister had to go to the Queen’s representative and ask her to prorogue parliament demonstrates that you are wrong. If you were speaking, instead, about your desire that the people be considered sovereign then I recommend that you declare your opposition to our system of constitutional monarchy and tell your constituents that you are, in fact, a republican. Saving this, please learn how the system works. 

As one of your constituents I ask you once again to improve your behavior in and out of the House of Commons. Instead of taking the opportunities that you have of speaking in public to make petty criticisms of others, please use them to build up the spirits and confidence of the Canadian people in these troubled times. 

Kirby Evans