Yes, Speaker Colin Fergus should resign.Sad but true. He’s not an awful person. But he is such a keen Liberal that he just doesn’t have enough grip on the idea of impartiality to retain the trust of the House of Commons. Or anybody else, frankly. Certainly not former NDP leader Tom Mulcair. Shortly after Fergus kicked Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre out of the House of Commons Monday, Mulcair called [watch here] for Fergus to resign. So did Poilievre himself, although in the circumstances that was to be expected. Hoiw often do you see Mulcair and Poilievre agree on anything?And a few months earlier, former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer — for many years himself Speaker of the House of Commons — also said he should quit after an earlier indiscretion..For this was not the first time that Fergus's judgment has been called into question. It was in fact the third time Fergus had made headlines for the wrong reasons.Shortly after his appointment, he foolishly recorded a video greeting for an Ontario Liberal Party convention. Not long after that, it came to light that he had attended a cocktail party for Liberal activists in the Outaouais region.Fergus of course, is a Liberal’s Liberal. The last time a Trudeau blackface incident came to light, it was Fergus (who is black) who suspended whatever personal misgivings he might have had and ran interference for the minstrel PM. Evidently he found it hard not to go find the old bunch and hang out.But you’re not supposed to do that sort of thing. And he should know that.What then of Monday’s business?The context is important. The Speaker is supposed to be the servant of the House, not its master. Certainly he is there to keep order, and as a disorderly House is always better for the Opposition than the Government, it is not necessarily a sign of bias if the Speaker reminds Opposition members when they get out of line. But that still doesn’t mean the Speaker is there to be a bouncer.And so we come to Monday, when Poilievre said that the for the Trudeau Liberals to allow hard drugs to be decriminalized in British Columbia was “a whacko policy by this whacko prime minister.” Yes, he called Justin Trudeau 'whacko.' Fergus asked him to withdraw the epithet. Poilievre offered to 'replace' the word. That wasn't good enough for Fergus and Poilievre was ejected. The Conservative caucus followed him out.Fergus didn't have to do that. There are rules about parliamentary language, but this was a judgment call. And it's the Speaker's job to exercise good judgment and keep things moving. He chose instead to be the bouncer, and by demanding total surrender, left Poilievre no avenue of retreat.Here's what he might have done. He could have said nothing. He could then have waited until the end of QP for a Liberal MP to raise the matter on a point of privilege. (Which was certain; somebody would have.) Then he would have been addressing the matter as 'servant' of the House, not as its enforcer.However, he did what he did and in the process made the story about himself, rather than federal drug policies. As Scheer says here, [Watch] given the previous two instances, a pattern had formed and he looked for all the world like a referee with a fondness for one team over the other.Even that he might have weathered. After all, just because Opposition MPs are calling on you to resign, doesn't mean you should. That's just what you scream across the floor of the House.Then came the allegation that he had doctored the parliamentary record to cover up another mistake, that had led to the expulsion of Lethbridge MP Rachael Harder. My friend and colleague Jen Hodgson covers the matter very well here. In essence however, Fergus had asked Harder to withdraw a remark, and she said "I withdraw." The words appear in the preliminary tape transcript — 'the Blues' — but not in the official Hansard record. How does that happen? Fergus also ejected Harder.Fergus claims he did not hear Harder say, "I withdraw." How the taped words failed to appear in Hansard remains to be determined.Meanwhile, it's another mess around Fergus.How many is one too many?Nothing personal, but Fergus lacks the judgment necessary for the position. As the first black Speaker of the House of Commons, he made history. He can be proud of that.But now he should go away. He's hardly been in post six months, yet has had to apologise to the House more than a dozen times, been sanctioned by the House and forced to repay expenses for an appearance he should not have made.And, in light of this week's events, there is no reasonable way to conclude that the Speaker has not shown a pattern of parliamentary bias. He has, in fact, so compromised the appearance of impartiality that is the House Speaker’s foundational requirement, that he needs to return to the back benches.
