Monday, December 10, 2007

Diane Finley Says She's a Progressive Conservative

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, here in Nanticoke and Haldimand-Norfolk riding, we got us an absentee MP by the name of Diane Finley. Diane's Minister of Immigration and Citizenship. Up until a few minutes ago, I thought she was affiliated with the Conservative Party of Canada. After all, Diane's husband Doug Finley is a top advisor to Conservative Party of Canada leader Harper.

Here's a calendar Diane sent me. It came in today's mail. It's a cheap-o thing with two months on each page and not really much room fer writin' on. As you can see, Diane says she's a P.C. Now, I ain't up on every single abbreviation that them politicians use but I'm pretty sure P.C. means Progressive Conservative. By the way, the "Diane Finley, P.C., M.P." text is on every page and appears a total of 15 times in the calendar.

When Diane ran for office for the first time here in Haldimand-Norfolk, the PC party had already merged with the Canadian Alliance. Diane never ran as a PC and I ain't sure why she's callin' herself a PC now.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Provincial MPP Toby Barrett won a landslide victory in October and he ran on the PC ticket.

UPDATE: My face is red. Commenter Jim informs me that P.C. stands for Privy Council.

While perusing Diane's calendar, I noticed that she made sidenotes to remind us of various local events and also of holidays. She reminds us of St. Valentine's Day, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday and St. Patrick's Day along with things like Mother's Day and the Dunnville Mudcat Festival.

Now, Haldimand-Norfolk ain't exactly a hotbed of multiculturalism. Visible minorities are present but in small numbers. We ain't got many mosques or synagogues but we do have Jews and Muslims as well as Hindus and Buddhists in our communities.

Diane's calendar makes note of relatively unobserved Christian holidays like Ash Wednesday but doesn't bother to remind us of the Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur, Chanukah, Eid or any non-Christian holiday.

How Progressive! How Conservative!

JimBobby

6 comments:

Steve V said...

JB

Does this mean Finley will be leaving the party, like all the other PC's?

Anonymous said...

perhaps she has actually joined the Progressive Canadians, to run with such dignitaries as our PC candidate in Newmarket Aurora

http://www.dorianbaxter.ca/

Jim (Progressive Right) said...

I might have missed the sarcasm train, but I think in this case, PC means a member of the Privy Council.

Paul Martin, for an extreme example, is also PC, MP.

Funnily enough, a lot of Cons took issue with Garth Turner calling himself "PC, MP" while he was still a Con.

JimBobby said...

Whooee! JimFeller, like I sed, I'm not up on every abbreviation. I reckon yer probbly right an' that P.C. stands fer Privy Council. I'll update my post.

JB

Anonymous said...

FYI: Those calendars are designed centrally by the House of Commons administrative staff and used by many, many members of parliament. Most MPs simply do not have the time or resources to design products like that themselves. In fact, if your MP spent a lot of time worrying about the holidays listed on the free calendar they send out, it would be a pretty good bet they had too much time on their hands to deal with minutia.

JimBobby said...

Thankee fer that info, Anon. I ain't so sure about the holiday thing, though. I doubt very much whether the HoC admin staff would be aware of such things as the Dunnville Mudcat Fest, the Port Dover Polar Bear Plunge, Selkirk Heritage Day, Fisherville Lions Variety Show, Daffodils-in-Dover, Delhi Harvest Fest. These are local events and must have had local input.

Are the MP calendars for Toronto ridings also Christian-only? BTW, Groundhog Day is listed on my calendar but Yom Kippur is not. I don't really care who designed it, it's an insult.

My MP is never in the riding so I wouldn't know how much time she has on her hands. I do know there's never enough time given to answering constituent mail. I've given up writing after no response to multiple letters.

JB