Why on Earth is Lawrence Canon apologizing for what his aide said in Maniwaki? She said nothing insulting. She said nothing out of line. There is a history there: six of the same group were hauled off on June 26 for disorderly conduct during a “sit in” at the constituency office. Then last week one of them showed up at the office looking intoxicated. She merely said, in order not to repeat past troubles, that if you want another meeting, conduct yourselves (reference to the “sit in”), and be sober (reference to last week’s incident). How is this insulting to all aboriginals across Canada?

From Lowell Green’s blog comes the real story:

At about 11:30 the morning of June 26 this year, a group of native Indians from the Barriere Lake Algonquin Youth Association and their supporters showed up at 127 Joseph Street in Buckingham, Quebec and began a sit in. It is the office of Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon. I won’t go into details about everything that happened here other than to say that finally Quebec Police were called and laid disorderly conduct charges against six of the protesters. According to witnesses, at least one of the protesters appeared to have been drinking.
Now fast forward to this past Wednesday.
A group of native Indians from the Barriere Lake Youth Association arrive in Maniwaki and demand to speak with Lawrence Cannon. He meets briefly with some of them.
After that meeting, Norman Matchewan, a Barriere Lake youth spokesman gets into a conversation with Darlene Lannigan, Mr. Cannon’s constituency assistant. From what we understand they wanted to arrange another meeting with the Transport Minister.
During that conversation, caught on videotape, Ms. Lannigan, who by the way is an experienced, seasoned political veteran, begins to lay out the rules for any future meeting. Keeping in mind what happened back in June, remember six disorderly conduct charges, Ms. Lannigan says, “If you behave and you’re sober and there’s no problems and if you don’t do a sit-down and whatever, I don’t care. One of them showed up the other day and was drinking.”
“Are you calling me an alcoholic?” asked Norman Matchewan, a Barriere Lake Algonquin youth spokesman.
“I’m not calling you an alcoholic, no,” Lannigan said. “It was just to say that you’re in a federal office. If you’re coming in to negotiate, I expect, there’s decorum that has to be respected.”

What is sad is that the media, in an effort to come up with another ‘gaffe’, just reports on what she said, but completely neglected to show the history between these two groups.

The biggest mistake in all of this is the apology by Canon. By apologizing you’re admitting you did something wrong. There was no need to apologize. There was nothing to apologize for.

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