[BeaverFever]

Quote:

....."I was asked to go upstairs to talk to the leader and I was informed I had to make a choice. If I went to the dinner, I'd have to leave caucus. And I said, 'Well, I want to do both," Greene said in an interview outside the chamber.

"But for some reason, just because I accepted a dinner reservation from the Prime Minister of Canada ... it was too much for the Conservative caucus.

"I'm a Conservative; I was Preston Manning's chief of staff a long time ago ... and I'm Maxime Bernier's Nova Scotia campaign chair. I'm a Conservative, and I always have been, and this won't stop me from being a Conservative," he said.

Trudeau and Peter Harder, the government's representative in the Senate, had invited all senators who introduced government legislation in the upper chamber to a dinner Tuesday night to thank them for their efforts.

Greene is the only Conservative to sponsor a government bill during this parliamentary session.

He helped usher through Bill S-4, a rather innocuous piece of legislation that enacted a double taxation agreement with Taiwan and Israel. Greene said he sponsored a nearly identical bill on a similar matter during the Harper years.

....'Treasonous'

"I was amazed, I was disappointed, I was crushed a little bit. The words betrayal and treason and treasonous were also used," Greene said of Smith's ultimatum.

Greene said he offered to give the Conservative leadership a "bird's-eye view" of what happened at the dinner meeting, and report back to his fellow Tories, but was rebuffed.

"I would go to dinner with any prime minister who invited me," he said. "This whole situation is beyond silly. Would my Senate leadership not want me to attend such a dinner so that I can report back on what the Liberals' plans are for the Senate? It makes no sense."

Greene said he will now sit as an "Independent Reform senator," a name he crafted this afternoon with his office staff. He will sit on the other side of the chamber now alongside other members of the Independent Senators Group and Liberal Senators.

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/politics/co ... -1.4118106

Spiteful petty little men

[stratos]

Have to agree, you are invited to a dinner with the leader of your country and by accepting you get kicked out of your political party. (face-palm)

[Thanos]

If there's any reason to avoid the post-Harper Tories it appears that it's because a bunch of idiotic ideologue puritans are trying to MAGA the party along the zero-tolerance for dissenters, like the Tea Party when they chased all the moderates out of the GOP. Is CINO's up for grabs for the hardcores to use to smear their opponents, or have the Republican pundits and Twitter shits on the southern side of the border already trademarked that epithet?

The infection is getting much worse, not better.

[DrCaleb]

It only speeds up the changing of the Senate to a non-partisan entity. The kiddie diddler left, so when another indie gets appointed to cover that position, the Conservatives will be nearly neck and neck with Independents.

[peck420]

Cons rudderless and lost their identity?

[prairiechickin]

Can't remember who said it, but it applies to the Maritimes in this situation, "The smaller the pit, the fiercer the rats." This is petty politics at its worst.

[BeaverFever]

Considering he's Bernier's NS campaign chair, this can't be going over well with Maxime. Perhaps the other Tory senators have different loyalties and this is really more about the Tory leadership race than anything else.

[Coach85]

Is anyone surprised?

It's a party without an identity and a bunch of old, past-their-expiration-date politicians.