Pat O'Brien said:
"I tried my best as part of the Liberal caucus to achieve my objectives. I now find that I can't do that any more," he said at a news conference Monday morning in Ottawa.
"I'm not being listened to in the Liberal caucus to the degree I want to be on this issue. They're determined to move forward on this issue and you can see what a rush they are in to do that.''
He decided to stick with the Liberals in April after Prime Minister Paul Martin promised expanded debate of the marriage bill, including cross-Canada hearings.
But O'Brien said the "full, fair and meaningful'' hearings he expected haven't happened.
"The truth is not what you say, the truth is what you do," said O'Brien.
He berated the Liberals for imposing a June deadline for debate of the bill, and for what he calls the poor treatment of witnesses before committee hearings on the measure.
Do you agree with him?
It seems this is the case a lone person who can't get what he wants and felt he could have greater leverage seating as an independent given the current state of the Parliament. In other words, I think he is trying to take the Government hostage over this issue like Kilgour. But like the Alberta MP, after he got what he wanted over Sudan, O'Brien (and Kilgoure) still acted like a scorpion.
Mr. O'Brien doesn't want the Parliament to vote on this bill because he knows it will pass by a landslide as per the two previous votes, around 25~30 votes margin. How democratic of him?
And we can have witness hearings till 2010 and he will still say there aren't enough hearings. This is filibuster to its best. I failed to see the need of continuing the debate when most of the MPs and most of the parties' leaderships have openly endorsed the bill. What we will hear is religious extremists continue to express venom after venom, linking gay marriage to sex with children and sex with animal (and they did) or prostitutes. And they wonder why they got a less than polite rebute from Real Menard, the Bloc MP and Chair who sits on that committee (he is openly gay). Now Mr. O'Brien is complaining about the 'treatment of the witnesses'.
They got what they deserved.