Canada/Politics: First Black Speaker of the House of Commons

[dewline]

First person of any non-White colour, actually...and he's an MP I met once in passing at a pro-CBC protest/advocacy walk from Gatineau across the Alexandra Bridge into Ottawa and up to Parliament Hill a few years ago: Greg Fergus. Details of today's vote here:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mps-vote-new-speaker-1.6984673

I'd have thought that this would have happened years earlier, with some other Member of Parliament gaining that honour and title. That's not how history evolved, though, so here we are.

Comments

[sabotabby]

Huh! Well, that's both cool and also disappointing (that it took this long).

[dewline]

Yep. Mixed blessing. We still got there...and there seems to be good news from Manitoba tonight, too...?

[sabotabby]

According to the first thing I heard when I woke up!

[blogcutter]

I think Fergus is a good choice for Speaker. As MP for Hull/Aylmer, he has had to deal, in both official languages, with politicians at all levels of government (plus the NCC), across a huge swath of different personalities and political persuasions. Surely that's what the role of Speaker is all about? Moreover, he has the confidence of the House, at least for now. The process of electing the Speaker is way more democratic than the one whereby we elect our MPs. Gender parity in Cabinet is all very nice (insofar as it's even possible in a gender-diverse world) but we desperately need electoral reform now - because it's 2023!!!

And yeah, I was also pretty chuffed to wake up this morning to news of the new Manitoba premier.

[dewline]

And I see that James Nicoll remembered a particular detail about Mr. Kinew's work history that I'd forgotten:

https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/13383682.html

[arlie]

Next milestone, I hope: a Native Canadian speaker.