Comments by "dixon pinfold" (@dixonpinfold2582) on "Useful Idiots" channel.

  1. There's an incredible amount of rot being talked on the internet about this story. Here is my version and analysis of what really happened: 1) The role of the Speaker of the House The Speaker of the House is a Member of Parliament elected by fellow MPs to run the House of Commons, not politically, but procedurally and administratively.  Both the office and the holder of the office are traditionally accorded considerable respect, especially the office itself. As the senior official, the Speaker presides not only over day-to-day legislative sessions, debates, etc., but also over visits to the House of Commons by foreign heads of state. Overall responsibility for state visits, however, falls on the Ministry of Global Affairs and the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). 2) Zelenskyy's visit The visit from Volodymyr Zelenskyy was an important one politically for the government. President Zelenskyy is popular in Canada, while Prime Minister Trudeau himself has been suffering from low popularity, so this was a chance to perhaps borrow some of the president's prestige. Perhaps to assist in this way, the Speaker, Anthony Rota, who is also a Liberal, came up with an idea. He knew of a man in his hometown (where he is the serving MP) said to have been a Ukrainian freedom fighter several decades back, so he conceived that the man could attend the goings-on, sit in the gallery, be announced by him (Rota), and be briefly lauded by him. This was entirely his own idea. One would expect that the PMO would have to approve the idea, but it turns out that, according to the (Liberal) Government House Leader, Rota informed no one in the government, nor anyone in the Ukrainian delegation. Now, the PM in Canada is a more powerful figure than the national leader in many other liberal democracies, and the PMO is said by many to practically run the country, so it is hard to know how this came to pass, but I suspect that it stems from a parliamentary tradition that the Speaker does not answer to the government. Rather, in the House of Commons, it is the other way around. So Speaker Rota invited the man, who agreed to come. Rota, no student of history, failed to vet his invitee, or at least failed to vet him properly. And as it appears the PMO and Global Affairs were unaware of his invitation, they did not, and possibly under the rules could not, subject him to supervision on this aspect of procedure. 3) The fateful minute-and-forty-five seconds) He thus went ahead and wrote his one-minute introduction of the man, presumably carrying it into the House in his briefcase or pocket. When the moment came, Speaker Rota told the assembled MPs, the Ukrainian delegation and the two national leaders that the old man was "a World War II veteran who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians." He called him "a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero," to general applause and two standing ovations. It obviously wasn't clear to anyone listening that this unknown old man's WW II service was the same as his "fight for Ukrainian independence against Russia," nor that they were even concurrent. (As we all now know, they in fact were the same thing.) I doubt anyone imagined any more than Speaker Rota that anything was wrong. Perhaps some were puzzled, but they likely just assumed that there were hostilities between Ukrainians and the Soviet government at some point in that era (perhaps before the war, perhaps during, perhaps shortly afterwards). A few maybe assumed that the Speaker misspoke; still others may have thought it best to trust that the Speaker and the PMO somehow knew what they were doing. In any case, it appears no one guessed that the two biographical details referred to the same thing, and that the man had in fact never served in the Red Army! And if some did suspect that perhaps something was amiss, who would risk withholding their applause only to later find out that they themselves had not thought things through adequately during a mere 100-second tribute? Allow me to repeat myself, to stress that No one applauding knew he was a Nazi, nor even that it was during WW II that he "fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians" as the Speaker worded it. (Of course, one certainly doesn't even have to be a soldier to fight for a people's independence. Besides soldiering there's fearless open activism, underground partisan activity, appeals to diaspora for money — there are a lot of possible roles.) They clearly didn't know or they most certainly would not have applauded. 4) The blame Thus in my view the entire fiasco is about 80% the Speaker's personal fault. Although he meant well, he blundered. The remainder of the blame I place on the PMO, specifically on the PMO Chief of Staff. I don't even know this person's name and I don't care what it is. But I do know that the onus for ensuring that the visit of a head of state goes well (i.e. perfectly) is on the top staff member of the head of government. That's the PMO Chief of Staff. That person should resign or be fired.
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