Parliamentarians should be given misconduct penalties

Many want to be armchair quarter backs in football season. In hockey season, even more Canadians want to coach behind the bench. And they are ready to do it from the ease of their favorite recliner or from the comfort of their favorite bar stool surrounded by their best hockey buds.
And that is where their game stays; in the bar or in front of their television. And when their favorite team doesn’t win they know who to blame.
Canada’s politicians in Ottawa apparently don’t understand that they are limited to cheering and booing from the stands should they ever venture over to Kanata to watch the Senators play. In fact following the spectacle from last week, they really haven’t figured out that they can’t play hockey.
They still insisted on a hearing about naming Shane Doan captain of Canada’s national hockey team. They wanted to review an issue that was 17 months old. An issue that the NHL had already cleared Doan of.
The last really successful hockey player/politician is Senator Frank Mahovolich, and before him Red Kelly although no one today probably has a greater love of the game than Howie Hampton our MLA, who even into his mid fifties still can’t wait to lace up his skates and get into the real corners of a hockey rink leaving the worries of Queen’s Park behind him. They know hockey is played on ice.
With so many important issues in Canada, doctor shortages, education, Afghanistan, border issues, international trade issues, one would wonder how almost every politician could wind up making quick decisions again Shane Doan from a single complainer. They wanted to know why he was named captain of Canada’s team.
The NHL had found Doan blameless. Someone had uttered the term “F..... Frenchman” but as Bob Nicholson, president of Hockey Canada pointed out, it wasn’t Doan.
The offence that the politicians displayed, ended in a complete route, once they found that they had to go into the corner to defend their actions to their constituents. If anything, all 304 members of that exclusive club should end up with misconduct penalties and be asked to forfeit a week’s pay for forgetting that they are politicians and the leaders of the country.
Meanwhile, Shane Doan, ever the gentleman was taking time away from his family representing Canada at the World Hockey Championships. Those 304 parliamentarians, are still trying to skate off the ice on their ankles, humbled for believing that hockey should be played in the hearing rooms of Ottawa.
And should anyone forget, the next time we hear a politician uttering profanity, maybe they should be sent to the side lines for good.
–Jim Cumming,
Publisher