local conservative mp colin mayes, flunks again

once again, our local mp Colin Mayes flaps his gums and blunders, as usual. one would think when he is talking on a particular subject, as in his latest report on 'the status of women' he would check and double check his facts.

a letter to the editor of our local newspaper the salmon arm observer publishes:

MP needs a political history lesson
Dec 27 2006

In his recent MP Report, Colin Mayes claims that the first woman elected as an MP was a Conservative.

Does the man know nothing of Canadian political history?

Agnes MacPhail, first woman MP, was a member of the old Progressive party and certainly no ‘small c’ conservative. This pacifist and advocate for farmers, women’s rights and prison reform would turn over in her grave if she could hear herself being associated with the Harper Conservatives. By all historical accounts, Agnes MacPhail would have been appalled at the attitude of this government towards women.

Agnes MacPhail was elected to Parliament five times — the last time under OFO-Labour banner in 1935. She was a member of the Ginger socialist group from which the CCF grew — in fact, she was the first president of the Ontario CCF.

She was a Progressive not a Conservative Mr. Mayes.

Howard Brown

and as vernonblog points out:

Elections CanadaThe 1921 election made history in another way, as well. For the first time, the Liberals and Conservatives no longer held all the seats in the Commons. Sixty-four Progressives were sent to Parliament, nearly all of them farmers from Ontario and the West. Macphail sat with them in the Commons. The Progressives saw themselves not as a political party, but as a group of independents participating in a revolution against the two old parties, which, they charged, were dominated by the interests of business and the wealthy. These newcomers to Ottawa advocated group government in which legislators would make laws through co-operation and without having to follow partisan lines. While they had the second-largest block of seats in the Commons, the Progressives refused to be the Official Opposition.

For the first fourteen of her years in Parliament, Macphail's was the only female voice there. She was rumoured on several occasions to have been offered a Cabinet post by Prime Minister Mackenzie King, if she or the Progressives would join his Liberals. But she preferred to keep her independence and not have to follow the official line of a governing party.

1921 First woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons, Agnes Macphail"I want for myself what I want for other women, absolute equality. After that is secured, men and women can take turns at being angels." -- Agnes Macphail, first woman member of Canada's House of Commons