Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have called it the Case of the Galling Peters.
The Peters' crimes are unrelated past their given names, their shared status as right-wing frontbenchers and both of them making statements so chafing, so specious they provoke a physical reaction, like a rasp running across knuckles.
The first Peter to pipe up was federal Conservative Justice Minister Peter Mackay last week. Harper's Tories have been hounded by pleas to call a national inquiry into what are seen as high rates of missing and murdered aboriginal women across the country; it's an issue this region confronts when dealing with the so-called Highway of Tears. The pleas became stronger when Winnipeg police found the body of aboriginal teen Tina Fontaine wrapped in a bag and dumped in the Red River recently.
Mackay's response was "Now is the time to take action, not to continue to study the issue." Splendid. But as a Toronto Sun editorial pointed out, Mackay's sentiment is drowned out by the sound of Tory heel-dragging. His government points to "concrete action" such as a $25 million in tracking and reducing violence but the effort is not specifically targeted to dealing with violence against women; meanwhile, in 2010, the Tories cut funding from Sisters in Spirit, an organization that collected data on crime against aboriginal women.
Apparently Harper's government believes justice should be blind and stupid.
What makes Mackay's stance particularly galling is that it is now the Tories stock response to the plea for a national inquiry into violence against aboriginal women. After the Tory majority on a committee that produced a parliamentary report on the issue last March insured an inquiry wasn't among the recommendations, Mackay defended the government by saying, according to the Globe, "What we do not need now is to stop and talk and study. We need more action."
The week before the report and after a Parliament Hill vigil following the death of Inuk woman Loretta Saunders, Mackay, according to the Nunatsiuq News, said "it's well past the time for more studies and inquiries", his words underscored by heckling from Tory MP Leona Aglukkaq.
Mackay also distributed a list of 40 reports on missing and murdered aboriginal women to show how many studies there are, prompting Amnesty International, which wrote two of the reports, to write the minister asking him not to use its work. Its letter pointed out the recommendations in the reports had been mostly ignored and that most of the organizations that wrote them had their budgets dramatically cut. One supposes that makes sense - the Tories are taking action to make sure there are no mores studies and no inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.
The other Peter to add his worthless two-penneth was B.C. education minister Peter Fassbender. In the midst of another bitter labour dispute with the province's teachers and with the calendar marching down to the start of school with no resolution in sight, Minister Factbender took to CBC Radio to say negotiations were impossible because the B.C. Teachers' Federation leadership was in Kelowna for a conference.
"I would suggest [BCTF president] Jim Iker get in touch with our chief negotiator; it isn't just Mr. Iker, but also his negotiating team that are all up there," said Fassbender.
The BCTF responded by saying Iker and the bargaining team were available at any point - presumably through the modern miracles of automobiles, airplanes and telecommunications - and asked Fassbender to respect a media blackout imposed by mediator Vince Ready. The union also claimed Fassbender and the Liberals put in a number of preconditions - basically "a preagreement that would set the outcome of the talks" - on starting negotiations.
Fassbender told the Globe he couldn't comment on the preconditions because of the Ready blackout but said he was absolutely not violating the same blackout because he was talking about a website detailing the Liberals offer of a $40 a day childcare subsidy should a strike shut schools.
Lo and behold, according to the CBC's Stephen Quinn, the website is not just about the subsidy - like one of those holiday deals that offers a free trip to swim with the dolphins but includes an eight-hour timeshare seminar, much of the site is devoted to how fair the government's offer to teachers is and how the BCTF's demands are recalcitrant and ungrateful. As Quinn writes in the Globe, "So much for not talking about 'the details at the table.'"
The Case of the Galling Peters isn't much of a mystery. But it is baffling how two senior elected officials can peddle such appalling tripe - and how voters keep letting their governments get away with it.
