00:01:18.440So the one that you broke my heart on,
00:01:24.220because I've even had Stephen Harper tell this story,
00:01:27.160To a group of journalists who were at 24 Sussex and saying, you know, I think it was Tonda McCharles from the Toronto Star talking about, well, the decorum in the House isn't what it used to be.
00:01:41.120You know, people are arguing all the time.
00:01:43.540And Prime Minister Harper said, well, you do know that the seats are two sword lengths apart for a reason, don't you?
00:01:52.160This is a story that you tell in the book because that story is told constantly.
00:01:56.340I think if it's not still told on the tour, it used to be told to all the school kids and, you know, tourists showing up.
00:02:05.920Yeah, this is the problem when you start digging behind stories that just sound maybe too good to be true.
00:02:10.500So as the story goes, the government and opposition benches are chewed sword lanes apart to prevent dueling.
00:02:15.660And we're told that this practice harkens back to Westminster.
00:02:18.780The issue is that we have no evidence that that's why the distance is that.
00:02:23.180We have no real record of dueling MPs once upon a time.
00:02:26.760And in fact, Westminster has put out a publication more recently talking about they have lines on the floor saying that while it's popularly believed that it was to keep members apart from duels, this has no historical evidence.
00:02:39.000So what we know about the old Westminster is that it was actually a chapel.
00:02:42.520And the understanding is that the width was to allow a priest and two acolytes to sort of go up on the altar.
00:02:47.720And that's what the original distance was.
00:02:49.660in any event parliament as you know burned down in 1916 when they rebuilt it there would have been
00:02:54.700no reason to keep that distance for dueling um so in short we tell this story because we like to
00:03:00.500tell it but we have no sort of historical evidence to say yes in fact this is the reason this distance
00:03:05.580is put between those benches um but i i'm with you it's a fun one to tell and i like the imagery
00:03:10.980and there's all sorts of references to it in hansard um i think it's one of those myths that
00:03:15.340once you hear it and it makes sense to you you kind of nod your head then it's an easy one to
00:03:19.000retell and uh sort of in doing the book and pulling back the curtain a bunch of these tales
00:03:23.540i was also disappointed to find out there might not be as much historical accuracy as i would like
00:03:28.180to some of the more fun parliament stories well i mean we should have known it wasn't true because
00:03:33.060as you point out in the book armor has been banned in uh parliament in the british parliament which
00:03:39.680we inherited it's been banned since 1313 and um weapons have long been banned in fact in uh
00:03:49.000Canada's parliament in Ottawa until the 2014 terrorist attack, the guards inside the parliamentary
00:03:56.880buildings were not armed. That I didn't know. I haven't looked into that history, but the guys
00:04:04.800on the outside were armed. The guys on the inside weren't. Okay. Yes. I mean, we've certainly seen
00:04:11.100some interesting, I would say, violence on the inside of the legislature, luckily not involving
00:04:17.320firearms, but involving some other things. So not to jump ahead too far into the book,
00:04:21.320but for example, things thrown from the gallery that we might not expect or
00:04:24.760fistfights between members. But luckily, the more extreme violence we've been shielded from,
00:04:31.660and certainly, I mean, the idea of Canadian MPs, you know, in 1867 showing up with swords and that
00:04:37.500being a thing to worry about, it's just there's absolutely no basis for that.
00:04:41.000the book is called unparliamentary why that's a phrase that the speaker will often use when
00:04:49.060somebody says something they shouldn't right yeah so i wanted to take it a bit broader than that and
00:04:54.300also talk about things that you wouldn't associate with parliament so while a lot of it has to do
00:04:59.700with sort of incidents of decorum that would otherwise be unparliamentary so obviously
00:05:04.540curse words and unparliamentary language we can think of but also conduct between members like
00:05:08.840fistfights or like being drunk in your seat. I also wanted this book to talk about things you
00:05:12.680wouldn't associate with Parliament. So, for example, the library of Parliament having a
00:05:16.660subscription to Playboy once upon a time. And the story there is that, yeah, the copies would go
00:05:23.000missing, shockingly. And so the solution of then parliamentary librarian Eric Spicer was to put
00:05:27.480them in the rare book room, which members had to sign in and out. And all of a sudden, the theft
00:05:31.800stopped. So just to say, there's all these sorts of little tales that you wouldn't think of when
00:05:36.440you think Parliament, and I wanted to capture them in one place.
00:05:46.260You know, as someone that started going to Parliament Hill full-time, I've been watching
00:05:53.180it longer than that, but started going to Parliament Hill full-time, watching the debate,
00:05:56.880sitting in the chamber, sitting in that press gallery, above the speaker's chair that you
00:06:01.300write about, you know, I'm not sure that that's ever accurate.
00:06:05.360People just feel like it is. But I want to ask you, you tell a story about a Quebec liberal MP named Eugene Fissett and the liberal whip. So these are two liberal MPs. This is in September 1930. And the second liberal MP, the whip, is Pierre-Francois Casgreen. What happened between them that led to a black eye and a funny heckle from Prime Minister R.B. Bennett?
00:06:32.700Oh, my God. So, Mr. Fizet, I'm not totally sure how to say his name, but right. He complained about his seat in the chamber and was specifically complaining, apparently, about the office space he had been allocated.
00:06:44.580And so on the first day that Parliament opened in 1930, he gets into an altercation with the whip and the whip punches him in the eye. And he is depicted in all the newspaper stories as basically sporting a black eye. His glasses go flying in the fracas.
00:06:59.360There's no evidence that as a result of that particular intervention, his office space changed or his seat location changed.
00:07:53.960But Hansard wouldn't necessarily capture a moment like that.
00:07:57.220You're not going to see, you know, editor's note member walked over and got punched in the face.
00:08:01.880And it's the newspaper reporters in the gallery who saw it happen, who bring this story to life.
00:08:05.980There's interviews with other members.
00:08:07.220That's how we know that this happened.
00:08:09.120But certainly if we're talking about how decorum has changed over time, I'm happy to say that no MP has recently been seen in the chamber with a black eye as a result of speaking to another MP, particularly a member of their own caucus.
00:08:19.700It was described in a newspaper at the time as a fistic encounter on the floor of the Chamber of the House of Commons. So, as you say, were they in session or not, we don't know. But, you know, I've never looked at how Hansard captured Elbowgate, which is when Justin Trudeau got impatient that the Conservatives, so he's newly elected Prime Minister.
00:08:43.540the um the NDP and the conservatives don't want to get to a particular vote I forget what the vote
00:08:50.960was but I watched this live and Trudeau gets so fed up with them dilly-dallying that he
00:08:57.420walks down the through the chamber to where Gord Brown for the conservatives is talking with
00:09:04.680some New Democrat colleagues. And he grabs Brown by the elbow and drags him to his seat. And while
00:09:14.660doing so, as he turns, Trudeau elbows the breast of New Democrat Ruth Ellen Brasso. I've never
00:09:21.560looked at how Hansard captured that fracas, but we do know that it led to a colorful incident for
00:09:27.600the PM. Yes, I can disappoint you by telling you exactly how Hansard captures it on that particular
00:09:34.560day. And that is that, you know, the speaker says, call in the members. That's right before a vote.
00:09:39.980And then we see in the English answer, it says before the taking of the vote, the speaker,
00:09:44.900I will hear the honorable member on a brief point of order or question of privilege,
00:09:48.060whatever it is. And then we have the discussion of what happened. So the actual conduct itself
00:09:53.300doesn't get any sort of specific line in Hansard. It's the people talking about it right after.
00:09:59.320And that's one of the interesting things about Hansard and heckling and all this stuff. So
00:10:03.800So now we have a convention, for example, if someone's heckled, but there's no response to it, it doesn't do anything for the debate, the actual text of the heckle won't be recorded.
00:10:12.740Whereas in the past, you'd often see a lot of these interjections in brackets and whatnot.
00:10:16.720So it sort of depends on how much impact it has in the debate day.
00:10:20.800In that particular case, though, you can certainly understand what had happened, given all the discussion that follows and all the various apologies.
00:12:45.600In any event, what happens in that room, a little bit of a discrepancy in the reporting, either Mr. Bunster is there with a knife waiting for Mr. Chevelle or just punches start flying or Prime Minister Johnny McDonald is there with some other conservatives and like, oh, they're not going to fight. Let's get out of here.
00:13:00.100What we know happens at some point is punches start flying. And we know that Mr. Bunster has Mr. Chevelle in a headlock. And to get out of it, Chevelle rips out a portion of Mr. Bunster's beard.
00:13:11.580We're then told in most reporting that he runs through the commons parading it like a trophy.
00:13:16.760And so it's sort of the beard pull around Ottawa.
00:13:19.400Now, Mr. Bunster, many years later, is asked about a patch on his beard.
00:13:23.820So we know kind of implicitly from that that definitely there was a mark left.
00:13:28.280And he basically said, no, no, no, I got it back.
00:13:30.320And he must have had some mattress stuffing that he was parading around the commons.
00:14:08.660Was there a lot of drinking and fistfighting in pre-Confederation parliaments in upper and lower Canada?
00:14:17.100Yes, this is a fun history for a number of reasons.
00:14:20.540But yes, we know that the drinking was rampant.
00:14:24.340Fistfights, we have reports of here and there.
00:14:26.100I mean, there's a great article on the early days in Ontario where actually a problem was members getting up to speak and dying mid-speech,
00:14:33.900which I understand the Hansard in one case just says, and the member thereupon expiring.
00:14:38.660moves on to the next so you know very very dry way to uh to report that but yes they they were
00:14:44.840drinking um and so the actual um nova scotia incident you're you're mentioning comes days
00:14:49.320after reports that basically um members were sort of throwing pamphlets and books that one guy they
00:14:55.720wanted to stop talking um and obviously alcohol was suggested to be a part of that but the antics
00:15:02.560in those early early days were quite something they used to have a practice of putting um little
00:15:07.480paper hats on members who were sleeping. And then it would be this big game of making as much noise
00:15:12.780when the person would finish speaking to sort of see where the hat would fall when the sleeping
00:15:17.360member was awoken by all the ruckus in the chamber. So very, you know, schoolboy, but
00:15:23.080nonetheless, you know, quite fun. We do have some some more grave, I think, disorder because of
00:15:30.300drinking, including a member who walks in and sort of waving his cane around and threatening
00:15:34.360to fight everybody, and we're told that he's removed by the attendants. We also have a story
00:15:40.800that's maybe a bit on the lighter side of a member who mid-speech stopped his speech. And from sort of
00:15:46.200the read of it, you would seem that he went to get a glass of water. We're told what actually
00:15:50.740happened was someone subbed out his water glass for something a little bit stronger, and this
00:15:54.520member sort of in the middle of his oration didn't know. And so he reached down and took a glass of
00:15:58.920a whiskey instead, and then was quickly in a panic trying to get it out and to have some water.
00:16:04.620Unfortunately, by giving up his speaking slot, he wasn't able to resume, and the speaker had
00:16:07.600very, very little sympathy. What I like about that story, though, is if you think about the chamber,
00:16:12.120someone coming from across the chamber would be very obvious and in the line of sight. So I'm
00:16:16.260thinking it was someone sitting near him. So probably someone in his own caucus thwarted his
00:16:21.040speech. But we're told that the entire house was in stitches when that happened.
00:26:11.960You know, I found that in press reporting. And I'll just say there's some pictures in the book, about 40 in total. And when I did the first draft to the publisher, I had about 110 and most of them fell away for copyright reasons. But there was one particular photo from the weigh in where I believe it's Mr. Brezzo and basically a speedo and sort of Justin Trudeau sort of pointing in that general direction with a shocked expression.
00:26:35.280And I thought, oh, this is the picture I want. But I will just say, you know, I'll give a plug to Post Media because I think it was actually their photo. And yeah, so the battle there was for charity. It was a boxing match. And Mr. Trudeau took it, I think, in the, I want to say, third round. But you did the play-by-play, so you could tell me better.
00:26:53.960But it's not the only time we've seen members pick up boxing gloves.
00:26:59.480You know, there were members threatening to fight all throughout Canadian history.
00:27:04.180We have some great examples of people saying, take it outside in the lobby.
00:27:07.720And then either the sergeant at arms breaking it up or members finally getting cooler senses when other members sort of intervened and pulled them away.
00:27:15.900But yes, so it's a well-celebrated moment where Justin Trudeau takes on Patrick Brazot.
00:27:24.040And when Justin Trudeau stepped down as being PM, Brazot tweeted that he basically would
00:27:28.380you thought it would be time for a rematch again for charity.
00:27:31.600To my knowledge, that hasn't happened.
00:27:34.140You know, my money is on if it does happen.
00:27:35.980I think they should have Katy Perry doing the anthem.
00:27:37.700Just, you know, really make this a full spectator event.
00:29:02.780And so you see him say, you know, why should it be illegal to possess?
00:29:05.320And you hear this sort of metal click as he pulls sort of the fish from basically a hook on a rope.
00:29:10.720And it's really able to possess salmon.
00:29:12.320And funnily enough, as sort of you hear the explanation in the chamber, you clearly hear someone say, holy mackerel, which I thought was funny because it's a salmon.
00:29:35.320because some newspapers say, you know, throws, slaps, hits. But the degree of force with which
00:29:42.660it hits the prime minister's desk, I don't know, and the video doesn't tell us. But the reason
00:29:47.560behind it, and we should say there is a reason, is that there was a salmonoid enhancement project.
00:29:52.720So the government did all these modifications on salmon, and it was very successful. The problem
00:29:56.700is they couldn't let the salmon go upstream and be caught because it would affect ecosystem things.
00:30:01.280So he was upset because a lot of fishers in his constituency couldn't make as much money as they would have been able to have these other salmon been released.
00:30:09.500And so he'd asked a few questions and was pestering the government and got nowhere and I think decided, OK, I need to be dramatic and actually bring the fish in.
00:30:18.220We're told that at least he replaced the blotter on the prime minister's desk.
00:30:21.700And I probably should note that the prime minister was absent that day, attending a Commonwealth conference in the Caribbean.
00:30:26.700So he didn't get the full, you know, wet and blotied fish.
00:30:29.980That would be the Commonwealth Conference, I believe, where Brian Mulroney convinced the other heads of state to push hard against apartheid in South Africa. So he was doing something good while he missed the salmon.
00:30:43.700Yes, yes. And we're told he has a salmon back in time for a press conference in the foyer. And just because I'm a nerd and like these things, there's conflicting reports on whether it was the clerk or page who removed a fish.
00:30:54.740But I have to imagine that in terms of your, you know, seedy responsibilities, taking out
00:30:58.900a fresh fish from the chamber has to be somewhere under other duties as required.
00:31:03.860But yes, we've seen plenty of props used over the years.
00:31:07.240I just really like the fish for that sort of visual you get, as well as the awkwardness
00:31:12.220of that hand-served intervention to tell us that, in fact, you cross the floor carrying
00:31:25.220So the one I enjoy talking about the most is the parliamentary genital exam.
00:31:29.020And that is mostly because when you say that phrase, people just look at you like you're crazy.
00:31:32.560And so it lets you talk about an interesting time in Canadian history when if you wanted a divorce, you had to go to parliament.
00:31:39.620And so you would go with a private bill petition and you had to pay money and you'd hang it on the door of the Senate.
00:31:45.660And believe it or not, parliamentary divorce lasted until 1969 in some spots of Canada.
00:31:50.680And for a while, it was the bulk of the Senate's workload.
00:31:52.920But the year of this story is 1888, when Mary Matilda White of Port Dover, Ontario, comes to Parliament for a divorce.
00:31:59.520And unlike everyone who'd been before her who said it's adultery and here's what he did, basically, she says, in fact, he has impotence and he's unable to consummate the relationship.
00:32:09.620And so the question for the Standing Committee on Divorce is, what do we do?
00:32:12.620In the cases that involved adultery, they would hear evidence.
00:32:15.380So witnesses would come forward and say things like, I saw him leaving her house, you know, at two in the morning with his hat off his head in the carriage.
00:32:21.260And you wonder, well, why are you staring at her house at two in the morning? But that's a whole other story. And in fact, there was fraud at the time. And some people went to jail for basically trying to collude to convince Parliament to grant a divorce.
00:32:30.680So the committee decides, well, we need evidence of the particular allegation that he's never been able to consummate this relationship because of some, I believe the phrase she uses is frigidity or malformation of the parts, end quote.
00:32:44.040And so we understand that the senators decide that two senators who have medical degrees should take a look.
00:32:53.440This is where we get another twist in the story is that we're told by press reporting that the man is a quote unquote dwarf, to use the word from the time.
00:32:59.880So if you don't have dwarf genital exam on your primary bingo card, there you go.
00:33:12.020This is where the story takes a turn because we understand that they look at her and decide that her petition is not proven. So if you're sort of trying to think between the lines, basically, if she's alleging her marriage has never been consummated, they expect her to look a certain way, which she did not.
00:33:27.700I should, again, stress this is 1888 and we have very different ideas now about how you might test virginity and whatnot.
00:33:33.900And so they basically say, well, you're not getting your divorce.
00:33:36.820You know, go home back to the guy that now every paper in the country has reported on your allegations.
00:33:42.760The story doesn't end there in two respects.
00:33:44.660The first is that there's a huge debate in the Senate about printing the evidence because apparently it leaks into the hands of the public and is seen in the hands of a boy of only 12 summers.
00:33:53.200And so senators are upset and worried about being charged with obscenity and just what this means that, you know, should the clerk, whoever leaked it, be charged with a fence?
00:34:02.060And there's a great Senate debate on just the sort of you can read through the squeamishness that they all have about the topic.
00:34:09.000And ultimately, they pass a motion to burn the remaining evidence.
00:34:12.080So we unfortunately don't have a copy of it other than the little bits that are in press reporting.
00:34:17.000And we know, unfortunately, that anything that would have remained behind would be lost in the fire of 1916.
00:34:23.460There's a little coda to it that happens in a local paper where we're basically told that the guy who helped pay for her petition might have been seeing her on the side.
00:34:32.200And we know that at one point he shows up on her front step and shoots the husband in the face.
00:34:38.320But for my purposes, it is the parliamentary genital exam that I think we would just all like to pretend didn't happen and luckily has not been repeated as far as anyone knows.
00:34:49.840oh man shot him in the face um there's not a lot of sexy scandals in canadian politics though
00:34:58.520um there's been accusations and you write about this i was there for it that a certain male
00:35:06.020member of parliament was watching pornography um while in the house and he denied it and explained
00:35:13.660And no, I was showing photos of me and my girlfriend on vacation at the beach.
00:39:49.820There's plenty of pictures of MPs, you know, enjoying a little puff outside center block.
00:39:54.940And as societal attitudes on smoking changed, he was in the camp of let's be honest about what you're doing.
00:40:01.880And so he was talking about how often when journalists would come to take pictures, other members would have him missmokes.
00:40:06.960And he says that he has basically photos of him with like 10 cigs in his hands because he's holding them for other members.
00:40:13.020And he's like, if you're lying about that, what else are you lying about with his shot at other MPs?
00:40:18.140The end of the smoking era on the Hill is a really interesting one. The book talks about MP Lynn McDonald, who was allergic to cigarette smoke and sort of made it her life's mission to make the Hill smoke free. And we're told this involves a lot of smashing of ashtrays and sort of getting up in other members' faces and being belligerent.
00:40:34.140They used to smoke in the chamber, didn't they?
00:40:37.500And in fact, there's even Jean-Luc-Litain Cartier in the earliest days gets up on a point of order and says, if members wouldn't mind, please don't smoke in the chamber and just go to the smoking room.
00:40:48.880And they had a smoking room in Parliament.
00:40:50.940There's a pencil sketch in the book that we have from an old archive because it was notorious, sort of the backroom deals happening in this smoke-filled space.
00:41:02.200And the senators, for their part, I should say, had this great snuff box that sat on the clerk's table and were told that it was tradition basically before you gave a speech to go up and smoke a little bit and basically cough it out before you got to your oration.
00:41:15.520um yeah so Simpson's point was basically you know if you're going to be honest about uh you should
00:41:21.320be honest about your smoking habit if in fact you have one um I should say we also even have
00:41:26.340some great stories from MPs of days when they used to send the pages to get them smoked from
00:41:31.620the cigarette vending machine in the cafeteria um just to really place that one in time and
00:41:37.000certainly we can we can all imagine the shenanigans going on in that era that was before my day I also
00:41:43.320missed out on what was known as the blind pig, which after they got rid of the bar in the House
00:41:50.180of Commons, people would come to the hot room, which is where a lot of journalists had desks.
00:41:56.140If you didn't have your own full bureau on the outside, you had a desk in the hot room like I
00:42:00.320did for many years. And just prior to me getting there, they got rid of the blind pig, which was
00:42:06.080you could go in and there was a vending machine for beer. And you could also buy those little
00:42:10.920airplane bottles of hard liquor. And in fact, there was the tube system for sending messages
00:42:19.000and they could ship them across under the ground, across to the prime minister's office and civil
00:42:24.740servants or politicians would sometimes send the money in one tube with a note of what they wanted
00:42:29.760and it would go back in the other tube. I have heard so many great stories about the blind pig
00:42:35.900And there's fascinating press reporting on it. And it's suggested in some that, in fact, this was the speaker's way of resolving the impasse where members wanted booze on the hill but couldn't be seen to sort of have it.
00:42:48.320And so the solution was, well, let's put it in the press gallery. And we have some great interviews with former heads of the press gallery talking about just how much beer they would purchase.
00:42:56.960I think once of those 80 cases a month at one point they would go through. And so, yeah, it's a it's a fascinating history.
00:43:05.200if he was in um in center block on a saturday night and there were people in um in the hot
00:43:14.820room he would drop by for a beer and watch hockey night in canada there you go i mean it's there's
00:43:21.920so many untold stories of the hill i have to be honest so one of the constraints on this book
00:43:26.840was i wanted to use things which are publicly sourced um and then in the process of telling
00:43:31.140people you're writing this they tell you all these other stories that have no you know uh
00:43:35.540public facing element but the shenanigans that people got up to uh when they were when they
00:43:41.420were drunk uh is is the legend um i will tell you by the way one of my favorite stories it's not in
00:43:46.560the book and not alcohol based but just one of the cleanest pranks i've ever heard of involves
00:43:50.660a member who had an identical twin brother and uh one day the identical twin comes to ottawa to
00:43:56.760surprise his brother just sort of a friendly family thing and immediately the press starts
00:44:00.720hounding him and asking him all these questions he's like no it's not me it's not me and i gather
00:44:04.800he sort of shows the driver's license and they're like oh we didn't know you know he had an identical
00:44:08.500twin brother and like yeah yeah and the journalists agree listen how about we pull a little prank on
00:44:13.820him we'll tell him you're holding a press conference in center block and sort of we'll
00:44:18.180send a page in to say hey your brother's pretending to be you and doing a press conference so uh
00:44:23.160they're like yeah yeah so they get a bunch of their friends together they're in center block
00:44:25.620in the rotunda and the identical twins sort of hang around they send the note in this poor page
00:44:30.020goes in the note, you know, your brother's pretending to be you giving a press conference.
00:44:33.620And as we're told, you could just hear the running as this member is leaping over people
00:44:39.260to get to center block. And as soon as sort of there's wind of it, the identical twin who's in
00:44:44.020front of the press starts spouting off something wild. You know, that's why we're going to colonize
00:44:48.020Mars and put the opposition there, whatever it is. And we're basically told the MP tackles his
00:44:52.600brother, just full on jumps on him and it starts wringing his neck and then realizes he's in front
00:44:58.820of a whole bunch of journalists who are about to photograph him choking a constituent and sort of
00:45:02.620pulls back. And we're told the press uproariously laughed at this prank. And I just love it for how
00:45:08.980clean it is. And the reason it's not in the book is just because it's not publicly sourced,
00:45:13.260but I know it happened. I can tell you why I know it happened. The MP told me. So I can tell you,
00:45:18.680I have it on really good authority. But I just love that kind of tale that we just otherwise
00:45:25.880wouldn't know. Let's end on on a positive note. It's not all fisticuffs. I mentioned Daryl Stinson
00:45:32.380a moment ago with that so many cigarettes in his hand story. He ended up needing cancer treatment.
00:45:39.540And in 2005, when it was Paul Martin's minority government, things were very tense and he could
00:45:47.500have cast a deciding vote, but he couldn't be at the House. He could not be in the chamber due to
00:45:53.880his cancer treatment. The liberals actually pulled someone for that, didn't they?
00:45:59.220Yeah. You're catching me sweat off guard because I can't remember the name of the person, but
00:46:02.660we have a lot of great stories of collaboration and compromise. I mean,
00:46:07.220one story that I'm fond of telling is actually during World War I, there was an MP who was a
00:46:11.580prisoner of war. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was taken to
00:46:15.920basically a German prison. And it happened that there was an election during that period and all
00:46:21.460the other parties agreed not to stand anybody against him. So he won by acclamation as sort
00:46:26.280of solidarity from MPs. We have a lot of great tales like that throughout our history of sort
00:46:31.380of the humanity of MPs helping each other out. And, you know, while the book was focused on the
00:46:36.440frivolous and sort of ridiculous or weird stuff. But they're fun stories. Yeah. But it's not to
00:46:42.700diminish the fact that they are they're human. And in that you have the full range from the
00:46:49.700serious to the very silly. And there's some beautiful poignant moments in Canadian parliamentary
00:46:53.300history as well that go under the radar sometimes. And yeah, so, you know, agreeing to pull somebody
00:46:59.120to help in recognition of someone's medical treatment. I mean, that just speaks to sort of
00:47:03.340the integrity that parliamentarians can have, even though I realized I focused on some of the moments
00:47:07.800where that might the integrity might not be where we quite want it to be. All right. Again, can't
00:47:12.440recommend the book enough on parliamentary tales from Canada's colorful parliamentary past. The
00:47:17.120author, Charlie Feldman. Charlie, thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Full Comment is a post-media
00:47:22.280podcast. My name's Brian Lilly, your host. This episode was produced by Andre Proulx. Theme music
00:47:26.860by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. Please make sure you hit subscribe,
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