Hatchet Job on NCC in Globe and Mail

I was on a plane flying back from Calgary yesterday when I read Murray Dobson’s anti-National Citizens Coalition hatchet job in the Globe and Mail.

And although it’s in the editorial section of the paper it really belong in the comic section, because it was pretty funny.

Dobson, who specializes in denigrating anything conservative as “virulently right wing”, was trying to make the case that Public Works Minister Scott Brison should not have apologized for calling the NCC a lobby group.

Brison, as readers of this blog know, is facing a possible lawsuit for falsely stating among other things, that the NCC was involved in illegal lobbying.

How Dobbin make his case?

Well he says our founder – the late Colin M. Brown –“took Ontario Premiers Bill Davis and John Robards on chartered flights to the Master Golf tournament in August, Georgia.”

That’s a hoot. Clearly Dobbin, somber working class socialist that he is, doesn’t understand these kind of golf getaway weekends. Believe me, the last thing anybody talked about on these trips was politics.

Then Dobbin claims our former president, David Somerville, was given a “special meeting with finance minister Michael Wilson in 1984 to lobby him on deficit cuts.”

I don’t know anything about such a meeting; the only time these two met that I know of occurred when Wilson harangued David because the NCC put out a “Tales from the Tax Trough” booklet that exposed Tory government waste.

Maybe that’s an example of reversing lobbying: politicians trying to get us to change our ways.

Finally, Dobbin says the “NCC presents position papers to public hearings.”

Yes we have done that from time to time, but here's a news flash: appearing before a public committee does not constitute lobbying. Anybody can appear before a public hearing.

In short, if Brison is hoping Dobbin’s “evidence” will help should we sue him for libel, he is deluded.