{"id":46521,"date":"2019-01-15T03:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T08:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46521"},"modified":"2019-01-14T17:20:47","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T22:20:47","slug":"jagmeet-singhs-conservative-opponent-in-burnaby-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/01\/15\/jagmeet-singhs-conservative-opponent-in-burnaby-south\/","title":{"rendered":"Jagmeet Singh’s conservative opponent in Burnaby South"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normally, the byelection campaign by a major party leader to gain a seat in the House of Commons doesn’t get quite this … snippy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh taking part in a Pride Parade in June 2017 (during the leadership campaign).
Photo via Wikimedia.<\/p><\/div>\n

Maybe someone should put in a kind word for Jagmeet Singh on the rare opportunities when an occasion presents itself. The federal NDP leader found himself on the right side of a ridiculous argument over the weekend as his byelection in the riding of Burnaby South got officially underway. Singh\u2019s Conservative opponent for the open seat, commercial lawyer Jay Shin, promptly issued a press release suggesting that Singh was \u2026 apparently the wrong species of lawyer?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Jagmeet Singh has spent his pre-political career as a criminal defence lawyer keeping criminals out of jail, I have spent my legal career building Canadian businesses that create jobs and promote international trade,\u201d Shin\u2019s statement read.<\/p>\n

When challenged by the Burnaby Now newspaper on his apparent suggestion that, as a former university instructor in International Mining Transactions, he was somehow ethically superior to the underpaid schmucks who provide criminal defence, Shin disavowed any such meaning.<\/p>\n

Criminal lawyers \u201cplay an important role; everybody has a right to defence,\u201d the Conservative candidate insisted. (Whew!) \u201cWhat I\u2019m saying is, he played that role. As a criminal lawyer, he defended criminals. That\u2019s all I\u2019m saying.\u201d<\/p>\n

One notices that even this characterization may leave a civil libertarian uneasy, since criminals aren\u2019t criminals until the Crown successfully convicts them. A defence lawyer doesn\u2019t \u201cdefend criminals\u201d: he defends the accused. But maybe that is the sort of distinction you forget when you are busy building Canadian businesses, or trying to become a Conservative MP.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Normally, the byelection campaign by a major party leader to gain a seat in the House of Commons doesn’t get quite this … snippy: Maybe someone should put in a kind word for Jagmeet Singh on the rare opportunities when an occasion presents itself. The federal NDP leader found himself on the right side of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53],"tags":[491,188,1168,529,798],"class_list":["post-46521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-bc","tag-electionwatch","tag-jagmeetsingh","tag-lawyers","tag-ndp"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c6l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46522,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46521\/revisions\/46522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}