Deal With It

THE IVORY TOWER

But beware.  We Quebecois are not all smiles and sunshine.

Senators.  Can't live with them and can't live without them it seems.  By now this week most people have heard about this man up pictured above, Mr. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, and I admit that this story is a particularly complex one, which is why the editorial board of Raccoon Inc. has decided to tackle this issue head on and see if we can just teast out some thread of sense to this not very sensible story.

First off we'll begin with the usual house cleaning.  Is there any faction of society that is more disconnected from the real world than that of the government employee?

I rest my case.

It has been my experience that the closer you get to Ottawa, or any nation's capital for that matter, the greater the disconnect from reality becomes.  Every day when you look at the press clippings statements get tossed around that sane, non-Ottawa people just dismiss as ludicrous.  Here's a good example.

Well, there's Van Loan yelling and pointing again.  I think he does it in his sleep, too.

Irwin Cotler's minding his own business when all of a sudden his constituents start getting calls that he's going to be retiring.  Well, he wasn't and now he's cheesed.  So, Van Loan fesses up that the Conservatives are behind the spreading of the rumour (or lie depending on how you look at it).  However, in doing so he states that the government's position on the dirty trick is that the government was just exercising its right to free speech.  Nice.  So if I send out a company-wide email to my employers saying that the Senior VP of the company's really into child pornography, I can just shrug my shoulders and say "Meh.  Free Speech.  Free Country.  Whatever."

Nuff said.



THE HANGING JUDGE

 

With this in mind as the prevailing Conservative attitude in Ottawa I present to you the words of Senator Boisvenu that touched off the controversy.

"Basically, every killer should (have) the right to his own rope in his cell,'' Boisvenu said. ''They can decide whether to live."

I'm looking for a murderer.

Wow!  First my right to free speech is defended and now my right to have a length of rope should I go to jail.  Well you can't say that the Conservatives don't have the poor and downtrodden on their minds.  Now, this is the kind of talk that I expect from some old-timers sitting around cups of coffee at a small town diner, but not a senator.  While the senator is, of course, entitled to his viewpoint, to be frank I didn't even know that the man even existed before he opened his mouth this week.  He was appointed to the Red Chamber just over two years ago, so to be fair this he's kind of a rookie at these things.  Here's a free piece of advice kid: don't say things that you will immediately be apologizing for.

Doug Ford: Like his brother, the unfortunate genetic result of a cross between Mike Holmes and Chris Farley.

I know, I know.  Rookie mistakes are hard to avoid.  For example, saying, "Well, good luck to Margaret Atwood, I don't even know her. If she could walk by me I wouldn't even have a clue who she is."  I could see how unavoidable that would be.  Or that “As far as I am concerned the TTC needs a complete enema.”  Hey, man.  Say what you mean and mean what you say, right?

THE VICTIM'S ADVOCATE

Man is nothing if not vulnerable.

On the other hand, Mr. Boisvenu is not just a crochety old senator.  There's actually much more to it than this.  In 2002, his daughter Julie was raped and brutally murdered.  I think that that is as much as any parent could hack.  From friends and family I have come to know that one of the hardest duties that any parent could ever be forced to do is to bury their child.

A mighty cold heart it can become.

People have become supervillains for far less motivation than what Mr. Boisvenu has had to endure, but rather than take up the mantle of supervillainy, he has done quite the opposite.  As a result of his daughter's murder, Mr. Boisvenu became the founding president of the Association of Families of Persons Assassinated or Disappeared.  According to their website:

"The AFPAD is a non-profit organization whose main mission is to overcome the isolation to which victims' families are subjected by developing links of solidarity between them and establishing bridges towards the necessary resources so they can access the information and tools necessary to reconstruct their lives."

It is difficult to argue against such a worthy cause.  I'm not going to do it here.  When you lose a loved one in such a way, I can only imagine how difficult it must be.  Even when you lose someone of entirely natural causes a piece of you dies along with them - that much I do know from personal experience.  The isolation, as well.  It's not easy and you can't do it alone, so to take your time and energy after such a loss and to utilize it in this direction is a remarkable thing.  Good job.  Well done.  The world could use more of these types of efforts.


HOWEVER...

Upon learning of Mr. Boisvenu's personal struggles what he had said makes more sense.  It's downright understandable.  It would be impossible to go through what he had to go through and not retain a certain amount of venom.  It is unavoidable that he would see a murderer with a different pair of glasses than anyone who has not been touched closely in such a way.  So before we go railing one way or another on the subject as so many other commentators have done, I would like to take a look at another angle.

Well, you can't fault him for not speaking his mind.  Or spleen.

According to NDP MP Pat Martin, who called Mr. Boisvenu an "asshole" for the record, threw out an interesting statistic.  "And 90 per cent of suicides in prison are in fact by hanging."  Now, I have no idea where he got this statistic from.  My gut says that he pulled it out of his ass and that it was not meant to be a factual statement.  Nevertheless, the recent rash of suicides in Quebec prisons is certainly noteworthy, and that was in fact what Mr. Boisvenu was refereing to when he made his statement, and that is a real statistic.

As someone who does have first-hand knowledge of suicide, and inspite of what Mr. Boisvenu has gone through himself, I must say that his statement hurt.  It did.  I'm not a murderer, but it still hurt.  Let me tell you what I think about this now.

Ride the lightning.

First off, two wrongs don't make a right.  On July 14, 1976 this nation made the enlightened decision to end capital punishment once and for all because two wrongs don't make a right.  We as a nation have accepted that to watch someone die, no matter the reason, is not a healthy thing for a civilization and that even if a murderer does not respect the life of another, we as a civilization do and will.  This is the tolerance that we show as a civilization that makes us great.

Secondly, to be an advocate for suicide in any form is not good.  It is an erosion of that same tolerance that we are famous for.  The logical leap is too far for me to jump between not advocating capital punishment while at the same time advocating suicide.  The message that you send is clear and unequivocal: my inability to kill you must not be mistaken to be your right to life.

If this is indeed his position, as I can only imagine that it must be, then I would suggest that Mr. Boisvenu spend more time rehabilitiating in the association that he himself created.


A RETURN TO THE TOWER

So the very next day, Mr. Boisvenu apologized for his remark as people were up in arms over the notion of complimentary lengths of rope being made available for patrons of the crowbar saloon.  The day after that, however, he had retracted his retraction. 

“The comments I got from 500 people, maybe even 600, said the media are exaggerating this.  Also, these people are saying, ‘What Mr. Boisvenu said, that’s just what people think.’ The people who wrote to me, the majority are victims.”



This meme never gets old, by the way.

So what the hell was the apology for?!  You don't go and apologize and then brag the next day about how right you were!  What are you?  Five years old?  Look, I have respect for what he has gone through, and I have respect for the work his orginazation does, but you can't have it both ways.  Either you're sorry or you're not, and it really doesn't look like you are after that.  So let me give you another brotip, sonny boy.  If you're not sorry, don't apologize.  Simple!

As a result of all this a criminal complaint has been filed stating that Mr. Boisvenu through his statements and actions has effectively been inciting suicide, which is not good at all.  I'm skeptical that the charges will amount to anything, but you never know.  In the end, I think that I would just chalk this up to a rookie that has a propensity towards running his mouth.  Maybe with a little time and experience he'll come to realize one of two things:

a) all life is precious and ought to be respected.

or

b) if you don't have anything smart to say, let the PMO say it for you.

And that's all the time we have for tonight.  Thank you for tuning in.  Until next time.