Press 1 To Complain

It's a fairly amusing irony that a newly-elected member of parliament who simply got swept into office on a tide of change without having to go out of her way to persuade voters of her qualifications to represent them in Parliament, and then expressed her contempt for their voting her into office by walking across the floor, is now complaining of a lack of ethics on the part of the party she betrayed.

Her parliamentary and riding constituency office telephones have been all tied up. She is finding it embarrassing and inconvenient that her staff is unable to cope with the complaints that have been ringing their telephones off their proverbial hooks. The hook here being that automated robotic calls initiated by the New Democratic Party whose coattails brought her into the House of Commons, have gone out to her constituents.

Commiserating with their sizzling annoyance over the fact that the individual they elected to represent them as a New Democrat, decided out of her newly-found sense of political conviction to represent them as a Liberal, without their express approval, let alone permission. Those robotic calls, while sympathizing with that annoyance at being given the finger, urge a call to Lise St-Denis's offices.

The better to convey the level of annoyance. The automated calls serving as a reminder that if those who elected Ms. St-Denis hadn't themselves thought of informing her through a baleful telephone call of criticism, the urging to do so released a sense of frustration. But of course, the stream of calls ties up telephone lines hampering parliamentary business.

So Liberal MP Lise St-Denis, albeit elected as an NDP member, is dreadfully annoyed with the NDP. She characterizes the NDP initiative to foment problems for her as a "hateful" and "immoral" assault. It is her argument that the NDP has no right to tie up her phone lines, in the process taking it upon themselves to "do politics differently", but not progressively.

As for the NDP, they feel perfectly comfortable with that kind of retaliation of betrayal of their trust. "People in the riding are really quite angry. This is the highest rate of participation we have ever seen with the use of this technology", said an NDP spokeswoman. And they are, after all, only enabling and sympathizing with the plight of those who voted NDP, ending up with the Liberals.

Sometimes life just isn't fair.