Public Relations machine, General Rick Hillier, Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff, was at it again yesterday.This time he was on Coach’s Corner with Don Cherry and Ron MacLean between the first and second period of game 5 between the Ottawa Senators and New Jersey Devils.

The General was interviewed from Afghanistan with Master Corporal Tom Charette of the 2nd Batallion Royal Canadian Regiment about the Canadian mission as they welcomed the Stanley Cup and several former NHLers to Kandahar.

I was watching the game in a bar that went absolutely dead quiet during the interview. 

General Hillier has to be one of the most recognized, popular and respected individuals in Canada right now. He has done more with the CDS position than any of his predecessors. 

He says he’s not a politician.  By job definition, he’s not, but he’s probably the best one Canada has.

It would be a real loss if he doesn’t go into politics after his military career.

Apparently Canada is no longer at war, we have stopped climate change, we have eliminated crime, not a single Canadian is homeless or poor, no one is unemployed or underemployed, all parents have accessible and affordable child care, there is a hospital bed for every Canadian that needs one for as long as they need it, and live-saving tests and surgeries can be scheduled and performed within a week.

All these and every other social and fiscal issue in Canada must be fixed and fixed to a point where no improvement is possible.

Why else would parliament be spending their time and taxpayers money on something someone may or MAY NOT have said during a NHL hockey game?

And by the way, the NHL already investigated the incident when it happened two years ago and cleared Shane Doan of the allegations.

Is what Shane Doan ALLEGEDLY said okay? No.  Do I think it should be an issue for Parliament?  No, again.

I don’t seem to remember Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt on Marco Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup final becoming a dominant agenda item for the French government.  And everyone in the world knows this did actually happen.  In fact, after the incident, French President Jacques Chirac hailed Zidane as a national hero and called him a “man of heart and conviction”. 

A National Post article today by Dan Barnes reports that MP Michael Chong thinks MPs should have the right to interfere with Team Canada’s decision-making.  I hope Parliament is happy with Wayne Gretzky’s roster selections for Vancouver in 2010 or I guess we’ll see the greatest hockey player of all time in Parliament defending the players he has selected to represent Canada at the Olympics.

The quotes in Pierre Lebrun’s Canadian Press article today, including some by French-Canadians, say it all:

“I stand by my original comments after our investigation,” Colin Campbell the NHL’s executive vice-president and director of hockey operations told The Canadian Press. “But I would add to it at this point in time, it’s rather embarrassing to all Canadian hockey fans we’re rehashing this again, particularly when Hockey Canada and Shane Doan are representing and working hard in Moscow right now, competing for our country. It’s ridiculous.”

“Totally ridiculous,” Canucks head coach Alain Vigneault, a Quebec City native and former coach of the Montreal Canadiens, said in Vancouver. “In the heat of the battle things get said sometimes, a lot worse than being called a French frog or whatever.  “He says he didn’t say it. Even if he did, come on.  If our politicians, French or English, if that’s the only thing right now they have to worried about… There’s a lot more important things going on right now in society. It is utterly, utterly stupid, not to say embarrassing.”

“If he says he didn’t say it, I would believe Shane Doan 100 times out of 100 times. I was front and centre that night and I didn’t hear Shane Doan say that,” said Phoenix Coyotes goaltender Curtis Joseph, who was on the ice when the alleged slur occurred.  “If I have to fly in to a court and defend him then I will, because it’s an injustice what’s being said about him.”

“It’s unfortunate,” said New Jersey Devils French-Canadian superstar goalie Martin Brodeur. “Coming from Montreal, you can understand that people don’t like that when there’s speculation over language and whatever… I know Shane really good and I don’t see him saying that. All these years in the league I never had a problem with it so for me to hear that other people had a problem, I have a hard time to understand it. But everyone has a right to react different ways about situations.”

“If you know Shane Doan, you would assume he would never make the remarks he’s being accused of,” said Ottawa Senators forward Mike Comrie, who played with Doan in Phoenix. “I played with him for three years and I never heard him swear. He’s a person people respect.”

Let’s drop this and re-focus government time and money on more important issues that impact and are of concern for all Canadians.

The last time the federal government interfered with hockey, then Industry Minister John Manley announced tax breaks for Canadian NHL teams (i.e. tax breaks for multi-millionaires).  I think we all remember how that one turned out.