Bears And Ad Hominems

 

It has been said that wounded bears can be particularly dangerous. They can lash out and put others in peril. Their rage often knows no bounds.

Something similar unfolded in the Ontario legislature this week. After a bruising week, our 'esteemed' premier, Doug Ford, was the wounded bear. Feeling very hard done by after reversing his decision to buy a $30 million jet, a reversal he attributed to not having more effectively communicated his need for the "gravy plane", he was particularly sensitive in the legislature on Thursday, resorting to that lowest of insults and violations of logic, the ad hominem.

Questioning him about the controversial Freedom of Information changes the latest omnibus bill contains, MPP Stephanie Smyth was the target of the bear's rage:

Said Smyth after the attack:

"You shouldn't talk to anybody that way," she said.

"There's a standard of decorum, of how you act. When we get in (the chamber) and we talk about issues and we ask questions, you don't go personal, right? That's not the place. You be parliamentary. You be classy. And that's not what is happening here with this premier at all."

Interim Liberal leader John Fraser and Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner say Ford needs to say sorry.

"What the premier said was so personal and so demeaning and so beneath the office of the premier that I believe the premier should apologize," Schreiner said.

Chubby Checker once famously asked in a song, "How low can you go?' 

The answer to that question as it pertains to Mr. Ford is still pending.