Garth Turner, where will you go?

As mentioned in various outlets today, Conservative MP Garth Turner was kicked out of caucus today because of alleged breaches in confidentiality and attacks on caucus members stemming from his blog. While he expressed surprise about his ouster, others less so. Some viewed it as hypocritical, others thought it was punishment for not fully towing the party line, while others humourously likened it to 1984.

Meanwhile, Garth urged everyone to "go and read it, and make up your own mind."

So I did. Here's what I found. Not much.

Granted, I only read October's worth of posts, but I couldn't really find anything close to resembling attacks on party members. True, he was skeptical of the Conservative's action plan on climate change, but then anyone with some education on the issue would be skeptical too. I still wouldn't characterize it as an attack.

As for the confidentiality breach, the closest thing I could think of was his thoughts after a Finance Committee meeting (that he's on) and his speculation on what the Budget Update might look like. But here's the thing. It was all speculation. His exact words were:

"As a consequence, I have no idea how this committee will end up recommending anything. Which is why Jim Flaherty is not waiting, telling an audience today that more personal and business tax cuts are coming, along with some new measures to help lower-income people get back into the work force...So, I’d wager the coming budget will look pretty much like this:"

And he goes on to list some things he thinks will happen and/or wants in the Budget. But he never out and out says "Jim Flaherty is promising these things will happen". Is that splitting hairs? I don't think so. Not once in the entire post did he elude to knowing exactly what Finance Minister Flaherty will report to Parliament. Plus, it wasn't even a caucus meeting. It was a finance committee meeting, which I'm assuming (and maybe that's my mistake) other non-Tory members do sit on and would know whatever MP Turner knew. So unless there were actual instances of breaching confidentiality in his earlier posts and the Ontario caucus decided to do nothing until now (for whatever reason), then I don't know where the accusations are coming from.

His detractors, however, are glad to be rid of this 'maverick', especially for being too cozy with the Green Party leader Elizabeth May. I find it disappointing that you can be branded pretty much as a traitor if you so much as talk to someone from a different political stripe or share common views and opinions. And if people use his MPTV vlog segments as proof of this coziness, they needed to be reminded of the fact that he's also interviewed Liberals, Tories and Dippers too.

The other thing that bothers me is that many commenters (not the posters) on right-wing blogs have already accepted the fact that he breached confidentiality, even though no one's offered proof. Please, for the love of all that is logical, read his damn blog before making a judgment about whether he did breach it or not. I don't doubt that I may be wrong, but as I said, if there were earlier breaches, why did it take so long for something to happen?

Matt, I would love to hear your reaction to this event, particularly this comment on Stephen Taylor's post:

"...Our system is based on an adversarial approach. It is important that the party stick together and oppose the opposition, not each other. Turner has shown thru his blog and interviews he has the right, despite being elected as a member of a political party to act as an independent without consideration for his party and colleagues. His disloyalty to the party and the leader has now come to bear. Mr. Turner should sit as an independent and see how much attention he will get from the media now..."

As a capper, those same detractors think he'd fit right in with the Green Party. I wonder if that's because they've actually read the Green Party platform and found that they mesh well with Garth's views or whether they've just read about his environmental views and pigeonholed him into the one party which has a broad environmental mandate? And what does that say about conservatives' stance on the environment?