Marc Garneau was once Canada’s first astronaut. It was no small feat.
He is now the federal Liberal MP for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount.
Before examining the arc of its trajectory, let’s set the context for the moment.
Commentators are on fire: might this be the beginning of the end for Justin Trudeau?
rebels
The question is not raised so much because the problems accumulate while Trudeau, him, has only for “Islamophobia”.
There is nothing new in his detachment from ordinary people’s concerns.
The question is mainly raised because deputies from his own party now refuse to obey him, no longer fearing his wrath, as if they knew regarding his departure.
In Ottawa, a parliamentary committee is studying the bill to overhaul the Official Languages Act.
It is a bill introduced by the Trudeau government itself.
Three Liberal MPs, in rebellion once morest their own party, three MPs who are not official members of this committee, burst into it to try to derail the train launched by their party.
Nothing surprising in the profanity uttered by the member for Saint-Laurent, Emmanuella Lambropoulos, a regular in nonsense and provocations, according to whom English speakers cannot be treated in their language.
Nor is there anything surprising in the nonsense thrown out by MP Anthony Housefather, from Mount Royal, who puts the anglophones of Quebec on the same footing as the francophones of the rest of Canada.
He too has a long record of excesses in the linguistic field, which go back to when he headed Alliance Quebec.
But it is the case of Marc Garneau which is the most spectacular.
Mr. Garneau may well be the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount, but he is a francophone by birth.
In the name, he says, of the defense of the English-speaking minority, he protested, in English only, once morest the fact that the federal bill simply mentions the existence of the Charter of the French language, which does not is just a fact.
Mr. Garneau wants to conform to the image that anglophones see of him in the mirror they hold up to him.
He even goes further than many of them. He wants to be more “angryphone” than English speakers.
He gives more than the customer asks for, on the backs of his family, without noticing that many English speakers, following being patted on the back for his fine efforts, despise him as one despises a servant.
He is not satisfied, like any good colonized, with knowing his place and sticking to it.
He is zealous, like so many others in our sad history.
Space
What pride, what dignity does he have left?
How might we have fallen so low? His return from space was less dizzying.
By what tricks of reason, by what psychological mechanisms does he find a way to do such a dirty job without blushing?
