Why Canada needs re-call legislation ..... Jerk!

So much for the 'new' Pat Martin
MP goes on another foul-mouthed Twitter rant
By Tom Brodbeck
Thursday, December 20, 2012

Just when our Kevin Engstrom thought he was done kicking Pat Martin around for a while the NDP MP said something else worthy of another hoof. (QMI Agency Files)

So much for the new-found civility NDP MP Pat Martin professed to adopt last year, saying publicly at the time that he planned to tone down his loud mouthed, obnoxious behaviour.

“I choose civility. That’s the new me,” he said in 2011.

Well, if civility includes calling members of opposing political parties rodent-faced prostitutes, then I guess Martin is on solid footing.

Martin got into hot water — again — Wednesday evening when he called members of the federal Conservative party “rat-faced whores” on Twitter and dropped the F-bomb to a fellow tweeter he disagreed with.

He also made foul-mouthed, disparaging remarks about Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

And he slammed the new Youth for Christ centre downtown, suggesting funding for the facility — a place designed to help disadvantaged youth — was a misuse of public dollars.

I followed Martin’s tweets live that evening and they got progressively worse. At one point he said the term “rat-faced whores” was showing restraint given the tone of the last parliamentary session.

Boy, Martin’s family must be so proud of him.

Martin shut down his Twitter account the next morning, saying he was sorry for his words. It’s still unclear, however, whether he did so on his own or whether he was instructed to by federal NDP party leader Thomas Mulcair.

Martin has repeatedly used profanity-laced language on Twitter, dropping F-bombs on several occasions.

His Twitter tirades usually come late in the evening.

So far, Martin has not apologized to Toews, the Conservative Party or the Youth For Christ Centre for his gutter-mouthed comments.

In the spring of 2011, Martin vowed that he would clean up his act after years of boorish behaviour. But it didn’t last long. The late-evening F-bombs on Twitter continued and he even got into legal trouble earlier this year when he repeatedly attacked the automated call service company RackNine. The company launched a lawsuit against Martin, who was forced to apologize.

Sources say Martin was very unhappy this week after he didn’t get invited to a joint federal-provincial announcement on subsidized housing Monday in his own riding of Winnipeg Centre.

It was particularly humiliating for Martin because one of the key funders of the project is the provincial NDP.

And they didn’t invite Martin to the news conference. His own brothers and sisters.

To make matters worse for the Winnipeg MP, his own son Liam Martin — the Chief of Staff in Premier Greg Selinger’s Cabinet — didn’t see to it that his dad got an invitation to the announcement either.

I don’t blame Liam. Who wants to invite a guy to a public event who runs around calling people rat-faced whores, even if he is your father?

Business is business.

Two days later, the senior Martin launched into his blistering Twitter attacks.

Martin finally stopped tweeting about 10:45 p.m. Wednesday. After about a half-hour, it appeared he was done. I tweeted at the time that maybe a caring family member of friend finally pried Martin’s fingers off the keyboard and convinced him to call it a night.

Whatever the case, it’s another chapter in the life of one of the most foul-mouthed, undignified MPs of our time.

I can guarantee you one thing, though, Twitter or no Twitter, we haven’t heard the last of Martin and his charming language.