Spurred on by the introduction of "Family Day" in neighbouring Saskatchewan, local radio jocks Tom and Joe at 92 CITI have been waging a campaign the past while, including an online petition with thousands of signers. Late last week the Free Press got on the bandwagon.
But it looked like the Manitoba government was the big stick in the mud with labour minister Nancy Allen turning a cool shoulder on the idea, saying it wasn't a government priority at the moment.
Tom Blowback wakes up to the issue today, giving credit to the CITI guys and others for driving the issue and slamming the premier as Gary-come-lately, while not saying where he stands nor why the Sun never woke up to this issue at all.
Either on purpose or accident, he gets the history of this little thing totally wrong.
"The issue even made it on the agenda at the NDP convention over the weekend, receiving overwhelming support from voting delegates," he writes.
Even made it on the agenda?
Here's the last line from Mia Rabson's Jan. 31 story previewing the NDP convention:
"There is competition afoot over a statutory holiday on Feb. 15. The St. Norbert NDP wants it to become Flag Day, while the Riel constituency wants the same day designated Tommy Douglas Day."Not just MADE it onto the agenda, but there were two competing resolutions.
Further, as Tom wouldn't know or bother to find out, the deadline for submission of such resolutions from constituencies was Dec. 19.
So just so everyone is clear, the party was WAY ahead of CITI and the others.
Now that a February holiday seems like an unstoppable train, it's little wonder Tom took a pass on his usual modus operandi of quoting the largely interchangable Batra-Starmer-Martin-Angus surrogate Conservative Party talking heads to begin mounting an opposition campaign.
He's not that dumb.
If the government didn't want to seem ahead of the issue too early and simply be slammed as "anti-business" by the same baying proxy Tories mentioned above, who can blame them?
The way it's turned out, Gary Doer should get credit for bringing in the holiday with Manitobans and credit within the party for turning a grassroots convention resolution into law.
And he can also credibly tell the business community it wasn't an idea the nasty socialist government has foisted upon them, but a widespread movement that all parties got behind.
It's just too bad it doesn't look like it's going to be "Tommy Douglas Day", but a day off next February sounds pretty good to us.