As much as this might be getting old, Brigette DePape, the rebel Canadian parliamentary page has been given her own chance to explain her reasons for her political gesture in today's Toronto Star, in her own article.

While her audacious breaking of decorum in the House of Commons would seem inappropriate and the it hardly conveys a comprehensive political statement, all the lambasting for her showing "contempt of parliament" for her gesture is as hypocritical as all the editorial dismissal at the many new young NDP MPs in the new parliament.

After all, it was the Harper Government that was formally censured for Contempt of Parliament making a mockery of its pledges of transparency and simple accountability with such incidents like with the Afghan prisoner detainee documents (which it still has not divulged after all this time) and the slashing of the budget of their own finance overseer for the temerity of doing his job that happens to contradict the government's fantasy land budget projections. Those are more serious misdeeds that are bound to get worse now that that fearless Canadian Auditor General Sheila Fraser has retired and bound to be replaced with someone more "tractable."

The treatment of the new NDP MPs is even more repellent in the media with all the sneering at their youth and inexperience. People have been worried about the disengagement of youth from politics for years, but now when we have young people who have shown such commitment to their ideals and their country, they are treated as a collective joke. Yes, Ruth Ellen Brosseau, the young Quebec MP who went vacationing in Las Vegas during the election and has little grasp of French, is an embarrassment, but by and large, this youthful group should be celebrated as a beacon of hope of newcomers from various walks of life to invigorate what our Parliament should be. For instance, Pierre-Luc Dusseault, the youngest MP ever elected to the Canadian Parliament, seems tremendously promising as an applied politics student now having an apprenticeship beyond anything he ever dreamed.

Instead of all the dismissal, let us celebrate the discovery of these young people who care so much for their country while realizing that politics is one realm that be the best expression of that commitment.