fajrdrako | On Parliament Hill... (Reply)

I spent my lunch break at the rally on Parliament Hill, holding a big blue sign that said COALITION YES - MAKE PARLIAMENT WORK on one side and COALITION OUI - POUR UN PARLIAMENT QUI MARCHE on the other. My only regret was that I hadn't brought my camera to take pictures or my pen to take notes. There were thousands of people there - no, I don't know how many thousands - and dramatic weather, as black clouds blew overhead, and snow fell, and the sun came out again over the Peace tower. The speakers stood on the steps in front of the Parliament Buildings and spoke eloquently.

There were speeches by Stépane Dion (leader of the Liberal Party) Gilles Duceppe (leader of the Bloc Québécois), Jack Layton (leader of the New Democratic Party) and other spokespeople for the Coalition government they are trying to form. I enjoyed hearing each of them; particularly when Duceppe said (and I am both translating and paraphrasing) that Prime Minister Steven Harper lied when he said that the Bloc wants to destroy Canada. "We don't agree about Quebec sovereignty," he said, "But we agree about everything else. For the importance of worker's rights, jobs, the economy, women's rights, the environment, on this we agree with the whole of Canada." There were signs saying "62% IS A MAJORITY".

Jack Layton came to the podium to say that Stephen Harper had just put locks on the doors of the House of Commons, which means that the Governor-General must have allowed Harper to suspend Parliament. Does Harper think he has to kill democracy in order to save it?

There were cries of "shame" for Harper. Layton said that Harper was now revealing the old policies of the Reform Party - anti-democratic, anti-worker, anti-gay, anti-feminist. "He shouldn't be worrying about the locks on the House of Commons," said Layton, "but the locks on the doors of people who have lost their homes, of factories where the workers have lost their jobs.... We have a recession and the only job he cares about is his own." Aah, political rhetoric, but true. At the end, people sang "O Canada".

He also said that Harper was revealing his adherence to the Reform Party platform: anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-environment. And that he was running scared from Parliament and answerability, trying to save his own skin now, to the detriment of Canada.

I saw a bunch of acquaintances in the crowd there, but it wasn't till I was leaving that I ran into

commodorified,

iclysdale,

raynedaze,

auriaephiala and

audrawilliams.

commodorified had made a big illustrated sign saying "DEAR MR. HARPER: THAT TRICK NEVER WORKS - NOT FOR CHARLES I, NOT FOR YOU!". She said it was fun to see how many people 'got it'.

As I walked back to the bus stop to return to the theatre, several interesting people stopped to talk to me about politics and what was going on, and to express their hopes for Canada. I felt a certain excitement in being in a crowd of people who agreed with me politically - a rare occurrance in my life, at least since the days of Trudeaumania.