Another step backward

That's what happens when women like Sophie Trudeau -- er, Grégoire-Trudeau, sorry -- flounce into the House of Commons on their husband's coattails.  Last time I checked, Sophie hadn't been elected to office, so her place was in the visitors' gallery.  She could even have sat in the VIP section to pull rank, but no, she entered the chamber itself and waved like a celebrity.  

Were you a duly-elected back-bencher, how would you have liked that?  Exactly.  Her actions were just plain wrong.  And as much as I abhor Ng, Joly and Freeland for their negative influence on young women, they too were at least duly-elected.  Wonder how they liked sitting in the back pews behind the "wives"?  Exactly, again.

Jill Biden accompanied her, but Jill at least has serious credentials.  She is a PhD and an active professor at the Delaware Technical College.  Nevertheless, she should also have sat in the visitors' gallery when playing the role of "wife".  Sophie?  She is an ex-minor TV host on a frivolous entertainment show.  Since when do wives get to sit in the House of Commons?  When US presidents give the State of the Union Address in the House of Representatives, their families sit in the gallery.  They do not sit in the House.  Here were the 'Real Housewives of Washington and Canada' today:

This pisses me off because it reinforces that women's status is still attached to that of their husband's.  Fifty years after the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, apparently we're still appendages.  I was in the cohort in the late sixties that went to the barricades to get rid of our second-class status.  Nothing's changed.  Here's the job you opted for Sophie, honey; stick to it and stay out of the House of Commons:

I remember when the late John Turner was prime minister and B and I were in the gallery for an important speech.  His wife, Geills, sat beside us in the gallery; she was not swanning around waving in the House.  

With Biden visiting Canada, you have to laugh when every Canadian newscast has scuttled regular programming to cover his every utterance and precarious wobble-hobble.  Switching to CNN, no one gave a sh-t.  Why would they?  

We are a banana republic and branch plant for the US.  

That's why Biden has taken two years to visit Canada.  We don't matter.  But NORAD matters and, in the face of aggression by Russia and China, we better step up and upgrade our quill pens, word perfect, cap guns, paper airplanes and floppy discs so we can detect those enemies when they fly over the top of the earth to get at the US.  Anyone listening here?  Trudeau's smarmy grinning was sickening, as he turned the House of Commons into a party room and private salon.  Surprised he didn't pile on and light up a joint!  The guy has no clue.  He's an international embarrassment.  But then again, what would a kid who went to Lycée Claudel know about our hallowed Westminster model?

Apparently, Roxham Road will be closed to the 40,000 illegal migrants who cross into Canada every year.  But we had to agree to take 15,000 Mexicans, Haitians and South Americans now crossing illegally into the US to get the Third-Party Agreement extended to unofficial borders.  Well, I guess 15,000 is fewer than the 40,000 now costing Canadian taxpayers $16,000 each when they get here.

Countries have borders for a reason.  They're countries.  There are rules.  They have to be enforced and obeyed.