{"id":2334,"date":"2009-07-08T18:13:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T22:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2334"},"modified":"2009-07-08T18:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T22:13:00","slug":"its-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2334","title":{"rendered":"It’s July…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…which means the bar for what constitutes a scandal has been set fairly low. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the two scandlettes making news this week.<\/p>\n

First up<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Minister of State for Tourism Diane Ablonczy is no longer responsible for the delivery of a key tourism stimulus package, and one of her caucus colleagues says it’s because her office gave some of the money to a gay pride parade.<\/p>\n

Saskatchewan MP Brad Trost, a fellow Conservative, told the anti-abortion website LifeSiteNews that Ablonczy was being punished for the decision to give $400,000 from the Marquee Tourism Events Program to Toronto’s Pride Parade, which was held this year on June 28.<\/p>\n

Trost was quoted as calling it “a very isolated decision” that was not supported “by a large majority of the MPs.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If I ever decide to write down my own set of “political rules”, one would be that when a Tory MP you’ve never heard of is talking to an anti-abortion website, you kind of know it’s going to be a bad news story for the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

Our second scandlette<\/a> is what I hope gets dubbed “the wafer waffle<\/em>“, but it will probably become known as some god-awful (no pun intended) “gate” scandal:<\/p>\n

OTTAWA \u2014 A spokesman for Stephen Harper says the prime minister did not pocket a communion wafer given to him by a Roman Catholic priest at a funeral in New Brunswick last week.<\/p>\n

The prime minister is under fire from a senior priest in the province who has demanded an explanation about what happened to the wafer, which is supposed to be swallowed.<\/p>\n

Spokesman Dimitri Soudas says Harper accepted the wafer offered to him at the funeral of former governor general Romeo LeBlanc and then swallowed it.<\/p>\n

Msgr. Brian Henneberry, vicar general and chancellor in the Diocese of Saint John in New Brunswick, says it was unclear what happened to the wafer – and says it would be scandalous if the prime minister put it in his pocket.<\/p>\n

A <\/span>video posted YouTube<\/span><\/a> shows Harper taking the host, but does not show him swallowing it afterward.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have to confess, this one doesn’t really bother me (but, then again, I’m not Catholic). I mean, it’s obvious that Harper wasn’t trying to intentionally <\/em>snub anyone…to suggest otherwise is kind of silly. It’s easy to flub the proper protocol from time to time – let’s just cut the guy some slack and move on.<\/p>\n

No, of the two, I think the fiasco surrounding the pride parade is more telling. It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that there’s some hostility towards the gay community in the Tory caucus, but to punish a Minister for appearing<\/em> somewhat supportive? That’s weak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…which means the bar for what constitutes a scandal has been set fairly low. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the two scandlettes making news this week. First up: Minister of State for Tourism Diane Ablonczy is no longer responsible for the delivery of a key tourism stimulus package, and one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}