Doan controversy still resonates across Canada

While the captain of Team Canada goes about his business of leading his team towards a potential gold medal at the World Championships, the politicians who decided to make some hay out of his name last week are starting to feel the heat.

The backlash against the perceived witch hunt atmosphere of last week has the politicians scrambling for some cover as Canadians start to wonder aloud, just what the politicians priorities might be.

Here's an example of some coverage from a small town Canada paper, most likely indicative of some of the other papers across the country and their take on the entire Doan affair.

This one is taken from the Prince Rupert Daily News. We featured this item on our general information blog A Town called Podunk and we reprise it below for the HockeyNation.

Cullen weighs in on the Doan affair

Nathan Cullen the local NDP MP for Skeena Bulkley Valley is disappointed at the amount of attention the recent Shane Doan controversy generated in Ottawa last week.

Doan became the focus of a Commons parliamentary committee which felt the need to discuss his status as captain of Canada’s national hockey team with officials of Hockey Canada.

Some members of Parliament decided to act upon an event that took place over 17 months ago that reportedly involved Doan and a French Canadian referee during a Montreal / Phoenix hockey game. The NHL investigated the incident and seem to clear Doan’s name, however it has become kind of an urban myth ever since, with particular interest from the Bloc Quebecois, Liberals and NDP members.

Last weeks committee almost seemed to take on the airs of a witch hunt as the Parliamentarians and Hockey Canada officials squared off. For the most part the episode has been portrayed as perhaps not Parliaments finest moment, as the national media took the parliamentarians to task for their blatant political agenda against what many say may very well be an innocent man.

It was the press coverage that Mr. Cullen took particular interest in, suggesting that the “press just went absolutely nuts on this.” Which would be a valid concern if not for the fact that much of the high drama of the controversy was generated by his own leader Jack Layton who suggested that Mr. Doan might not be a worthy representative for Canada, this despite not having heard Mr. Doan’s side of the story.

Layton, who has a tendency to speak first and think later at times, appeared to be solidly on the side of the Bloc and Liberal members looking for Mr. Doan’s head, when he said with no shortage of hyperbole, that Doan’s captaincy “cast a shadow” on Canada’s participation in the tournament, which if the Daily news article is to be read properly is not the position of Mr. Cullen.

“This guy has been cleared and is cleared as far as I am concerned,” said Cullen speaking from Ottawa last week.

To his credit, Cullen does appear to understand how silly his fellow MP’s looked last week and how they probably were not serving their constituents as Canadians might like.

But, perhaps before Mr. Cullen gets too concerned about the press coverage, he may wish to have a discussion or two with his own leader and ask him about those parliamentary priorities in Ottawa.

MP DISAPPOINTED BY DOAN AFFAIR
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Monday, May 7, 2007
Pages one and three

Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen said business in Ottawa came to a grinding halt last week as MPs grilled Hockey Canada officials about their decision to appoint Shane Doan as Team Canada captain.

“I’m totally disappointed. The press just went absolutely nuts on this,” Cullen said. “A couple of politicians make some comments and all of a sudden that’s all that’s going on in Ottawa. It’s very frustrating because it’s up to Hockey Canada to choose their captain. This guy has been cleared and is cleared as far as I concerned,” said Cullen, speaking from Ottawa last week.

An incident 17 months ago, when Doan was alleged to have called a referee “f---ing French,” was dredged up lately by the Bloc Quebecois, which demanded Doan be removed as captain of Team Canada.

Doan was cleared by Hockey Canada after the incident, and there is plenty of testimony that swearing and racist instincts are foreign to the Alberta-born player, who is a devout Christian.

A parliamentary committee yesterday passed a motion- supported by all parties- calling for the athletic body to explain the Doan captaincy a day after the issue was raised in the House of Commons.

Liberal leader Stephane Dion said the Tories’ silence on the issue was “shocking,” while Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe admonished the government for not taking a stand on an issue that he said was disrespectful to francophones.

NDP Leader Jack Layton said Mr. Doan’s captaincy would “cast a shadow” on Canada’s participation in the tournament.

In testimony before the House of Commons official languages committee last week, Hockey Canada President Bob Nicholson suggested it wasn’t Doan, but another player, a non Canadian, who uttered the slur.

Tory MP Michael Chong defended the need to question Hockey Canada in an interview with the Canadian Press, saying since the national team receives federal funding MPs have the right to interfere with its decision making.

“We’re talking about Team Canada. We’re talking about an organization that receives millions of dollars a year in government money – in public funds,” Mr. Chong told the Canadian Press. “They are accountable, in part, to the government of Canada”

Cullen said he could not believe the whole affair.

“I am just shaking my head along with a lot of other Canadians about what was going on. I am a little embarrassed politicians are taking this and from all parties. There are many other good things going on in parliament and this is not what we need to be talking about,” said Cullen.

Politicians plan their power plays in Ottawa

There it would seem to the casual observer (ie the taxpayer) in Canada to be no shortage of issues that our elected politicians might wish to tackle on our behalf.

There’s a war in Afghanistan in which Canadian troops have been sent in harms way, Canadians no doubt would like to think that their politicians have their eyes on that situation and are keeping it in the forefront of their thoughts.

There’s an ever expanding wait list for medical help. Somewhere in Canada today there is a mother or a father, a sister or a brother, a husband or a wife waiting for word that a much needed operation or treatment is going to go ahead, it’s an issue that demands more of our politician’s time.

Education is the key to the nation’s future, surely there is some time for debate on how to give our youth more opportunities to get ahead, to get a better education and prepare for a changing world ahead, it’s worthy of a conversation or two on Parliament Hill.

Crime is something that touches us all, hard core criminals seem to get but a slap on the wrist from the judicial system these days, maybe Parliament might wish to look into that and give Canadians hope that someone listens to their concerns.

But, no, on a Tuesday in Ottawa, the main concern of our elected Parliamentarians was not any of the pressing issues of our times, but instead seemed to be the captaincy of a hockey team playing in a tournament in Russia.

Shane Doan became something of a character from a McCarthy era witch-hunt on Tuesday, as three of the four political parties decided that he was the most important thing they could think about on behalf of the Canadian people.

The NDP, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois spent a good portion of their time Tuesday looking to have Doan removed as captain of the Canadian team in Russia and demanding that Hockey Canada officials report to the Hill to explain how such a person as Doan could be named to such a post.

The problem in their eyes is an apparent slur that Doan may or may not have uttered more than two years ago during an NHL hockey game. In which it was accused that Doan made a verbal slur against a French Canadian referee. It was an incident that was placed into an official NHL report and was investigated by the NHL.

Doan has protested his innocence since the reputed incident took place and continued that defence yesterday in the face of the Parliamentarian attack on his reputation.

Numerous character witnesses have come out on his behalf to say it would be out of his character to do such a thing. In the incident from two years ago now up for debate again, it was basically a case of he said/he said, with no definitive proof of the incident to be entered as evidence.

The NHL determined that to their knowledge there was no proof that Doan issued any kind of slur against the referee and effectively closed the case. Some say they gave the incident short shrift, but the issue seemed to fade into the background as the years went by.

It sprang to life yesterday as the three political parties decided to play a little politics on the always controversial issue of French-English relations in Canada.

While the issue of whether Doan said anything wrong seems to still be an issue for some, it surely isn’t the kind of item that should be debated or used for political points by politicians in Ottawa.

In fact since there is currently a defamation court case working its way through the system, this is the last thing the Parliament of Canada should probably have concerned themselves with.

The most that the politicians should have done and if they were serious in their concerns they would have done this a few years ago, would have been to instruct the federally funded Hockey Canada to investigate and report back to the Sports Minister.

Should they have found proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that Doan had exhibited the kind of behavior that the politicians were up in arms over, then at that time perhaps a discussion could have been held as to Doan's worthiness as a captain or a team member.

As it is, the members of the three parties have convicted him without a benefit of due process, tainting the situation with their own uninformed commentary, leaping to conclusions without any form of evidence or testimony.

They are treading in an area which they really have no reason to be, other than to score rather easy political points. In no way should they be interfering with the way a team is put together, or who they decide is best suited to be the on ice leader.

There was more than enough time since the incident took place for Hockey Canada to have been asked to look into the matter, letting it go a full two years before suddenly finding it an issue reeks of opportunism from the politicians, a condition not unknown to them but normally is reserved for those of their fellow travelers.

The grandstanding in the Commons and pointless television sound bites could have been avoided and were certainly not needed on something that in the end has no real impact on the running of the nation. Which the last time we checked is why the Canadian electorate sends them there.

This is not exactly what we send our politicians off to Ottawa to work on, if they think it is, then surely we are paying too much for the services provided. It’s long been said that the politicians of Ottawa are far too often uninformed on what the real issues are and what Canadians are most worried about.

The McCarthy like outrage exhibited by the MP’s on this particular issue seems more than a little over the top, and it has not gone un-noticed. Almost unanimously the reaction has been that the politicians are out of touch on this one, much like they seem to be far too often of late it seems.

Considering the amount of people that have been speaking out on Doan’s behalf in the last seventy two hours, we suspect that his character will come out of this fine, we’re not so sure we can say the same about the politicians.