OTTAWA – House of Commons speaker Anthony Rota has expressed his relief that the Japanese veteran, whom he was intending to honour for fighting against China, was unable to appear.
“Wow, really dodged a bullet on that one,” said the chief representative of Canada’s federal legislative body as he took a smoke break to decompress next to the entrance of a west block stairwell. “I thought since he fought just 80 years ago, things would’ve been pretty much the same as they are now, but maaaaaan was I wrong.”
The speaker said the decision to invite 99-year-old Ren Takahashi to be publicly honoured in a high profile international event was made after an extensive vetting process that included a random constituent saying, “Hey, you should invite this guy, Ren Takahashi, and give him a huge standing ovation,” and the speaker replying “Sure”.
“I took some time and very carefully thought it over,” added Rota. “I thought, ‘China is our enemy. He fought against China. What could go wrong?’ Turns out: A lot. A LOT can go wrong.”
The Speaker, as well as all 338 MPs who coincidentally last week applauded a Ukrainian soldier even after hearing that he “fought against Russia in WWII”, expressed surprise that things that are bad now were once good, and things good now once bad. Still, Rota says he is learning from this setback, and trying not to beat himself up about it.
“Even if he had turned up, it wouldn’t have been like with that other guy,” he explained. “My aide said he wasn’t even a soldier. He was a doctor from some generic unit. Number 713 or 731 or something.”
