Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota leaves the Speakers Chair after announcing he will step down as speaker in the House of Commons, on Sept. 26.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
It took four days for Anthony Rota to resign for leading the House of Commons in applause for a man who fought for a Nazi unit. The inevitable finally happened Tuesday afternoon.
Mr. Rota’s transgression was not ethical, but intellectual, in that he didn’t know – oh, how he should have – that the Ukrainian Second World War veteran in the visitors gallery that he asked MPs to honour, Yaroslav Hunka, had served in an SS unit.
But as Speaker of the Commons, Mr. Rota was explicitly the symbolic voice of the elected chamber. It was pretty clear that MPs were never going to forgive him for inviting a combatant from a Nazi unit and misleading them into clapping for him. That marred the joint session of Parliament for Ukraine’s wartime president, Volodymyr Zelensky. The applauding MPs are on video, and soon to be in Russian propaganda.
By 10 a.m. Tuesday, Mr. Rota was standing in front of a bulldozer about to push him into the political ditch. The NDP and the Bloc Québécois had called for his resignation on Monday. Liberal ministers heading into a cabinet meeting called for Mr. Rota to step down. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre did, too.
Liberal House Leader Karina Gould said he had to go because he did it without telling anyone: not the government, not Mr. Zelensky’s delegation, “or any parliamentarian.”
At 2 p.m., Mr. Rota rose from the Speaker’s chair to reiterate his apology, declare that the interests of the Commons come first, and announce his resignation, effective Wednesday. He walked out the door beside the Speaker’s chair, to applause, as deputy speaker Chris d’Entremont took over.
Mr. Rota is gone. But Friday’s mistake isn’t. Mr. Poilievre noted people are reading about it around the world, and questioned if there’s ever been a bigger diplomatic embarrassment. And now there are the recriminations. Who else to blame? Who will stop it ever happening again?
A lot of people asked how the control freaks in the Prime Minister’s Office had missed this. The Conservatives argued that the control freaks should never have missed this, and that it was the control freaks’ fault for not controlling enough. On television panels, communications consultants chimed in that Something More had to be done, beyond Mr. Rota’s apology and resignation.
Some of that missing Something More is on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who should have moved quickly – bright and early Saturday morning – to call Mr. Zelensky and apologize to his invited guest on behalf of Canada for dropping him into this pig’s breakfast.
Then Mr. Trudeau should have repeated that national apology in public for all to hear, including but not only for the Jewish community. And he should have done it fast to try to pre-empt Kremlin attempts to use the honouring of Mr. Hunka to further their bonkers claim that Russia invaded Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the country.
Still, the idea that Mr. Trudeau is to be held accountable for Mr. Rota’s mistake – pressed Tuesday by Mr. Poilievre – is wrong-headed and anti-democratic.
The Speaker of the House of Commons is, after all, supposed to be the impartial presiding officer of Parliament, and not answerable to the prime minister. Mr. Rota, a Liberal MP was elected as Speaker in a minority Parliament in 2019 when Conservative MPs collectively decided to oust his predecessor, Liberal MP Geoff Regan.
It isn’t supposed to be the role of the PMO to vet what the Speaker says and does. In a joint session of Parliament, it is the Speaker, the boss of all the Commons staff, who is supposed to be in charge. The traditional remarks of the Speakers of both the Senate and the Commons are expected to be both bland and widely ignored.
Asking the control freaks in the PMO to take control of the Speaker will infantilize the office, and by extension Parliament, and weaken accountability. We’d be better to go back to the expectation that the Speaker won’t invite a combatant with an SS unit to a joint session of Parliament.
But that probably won’t happen. The Conservatives were arguing Tuesday that the PMO should be vetting the Speaker’s guests, and presumably, speeches would have to be vetted, too. And you can expect the PMO to be asking to do that the next time.
In the meantime, Mr. Trudeau’s responsibility is picking up the pieces after a monumental international gaffe – and that’s a prime minister’s job.