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The Conservative Party of Canada, xenophobic? Balderdash. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a series of coincidences and accommodations by necessity. What the prosecution terms “evidence” is mere supposition. At worst, these are slanders against the good name of a venerable institution.

Let us consider the history, distant and more recent. This is the party of Sir John A. Macdonald, who in the late 1800s somehow bound together disparate nations of refugees from the old world, French and English, Irish and Scots, Yankees fleeing the violence to the south, Fenians and Orangemen, and aboriginal peoples, under the grand, unifying roof of the Parliament of Canada. Sir John’s great work created, in effect, the world’s first truly pluralist, multi-lingual federation.

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(Yes, there was that business with Riel, unfortunate to be sure, but treason is as treason does. Had the upstart been a dual citizen, exile might have spared him the end of a rope. This not having been an option at the time, the government did its unpalatable duty.)