Marilyn's Photos - Apr 17 2026 - Cats and Dogs are Politics
What is history? How do we decide? This topic seems like a field with land mines every two feet. There's no easy way to get out of the field. So to my surprise, the topic of history came up in the news.
Here's a headline from the National Post that got my attention.
No election, no imminent shuffle, no more talk of "cats and dogs" in committee, Carney says
Reading the article, here's the section on cats and dogs and showboating.
Carney says: "There is a difference between real testimony, real substance, getting to issues, debating aspects of law...and showboating," he added. "We're going to have less of that."
To illustrate his point, Carney pointed to comments by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton during committee debate on Bill C-9 during which Lawton discussed his preference for puppies while his wife preferred cats.
In a statement to National Post, Lawton countered that his discussion of pet preferences was in fact on topic.
“My point on cats and dogs was simple: free speech is necessary to protect debate on controversial issues, otherwise our society is relegated to expressing only harmless opinions about pets. Liberal attempts to twist my words in this less than 12-second clip are nothing more than an attempt to re-write history,” he said.
In pursuit of "history", I wanted to find the original words in the original committee hearing. It was on December 4th, 2025 regarding a justice committee.
"...the member for St. Thomas - London South shamelessly filibustered for hours, talking for two hours about dogs and cats, not about hate crimes, not about anti-Semitism, not about attacks on LGBTQ Canadians and not about threats against women."
I have just been searching for more than 15 minutes in the Parliament of Canada website trying to find the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights, December 4th 2025. This was interesting. I haven't looked at Hansard since I worked for QL Systems in 1979 and we were the vendor that provided access to search through Hansard and other federal documents. I looked at Hansard a lot then.
While I haven't come up with that December 4th meeting, I did read through the November 27th meeting. Andrew Lawton could easily be accused of "crimes against committee efficiency" - interruptions, misrepresenting motions as points of order, and then consuming the meeting with numerous and very long filibusters.
I can imagine he can talk for two hours about cats and dogs. Is that a useful skill for a politician? I don't think so.
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