Canada befouls parliamentary tradition with Poroshenko address

When you peruse the list of worthies who have addressed a ceremonial joint sitting of the Canadian Senate and Commons, none has as skimpy a resume as Petro Poroshenko.

Date	Dignitary	Office
17 September 2014	Petro Poroshenko	President of Ukraine
27 February 2014	His Highness Aga Khan IV	Spiritual Leader of Ismaili Muslims
22 September 2011	David Cameron	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
26 May 2010	Felipe Calderón	President of Mexico
26 May 2008	Viktor Yushchenko	President of Ukraine
22 September 2006	Hamid Karzai	President of Afghanistan
18 May 2006	John Howard	Prime Minister of Australia
25 October 2004	Vicente Fox	President of Mexico
9 March 2004	Kofi Annan	Secretary General of the United Nations
22 February 2001	Tony Blair	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
29 April 1999	Václav Havel	President of the Czech Republic
24 September 1998	Nelson Mandela	President of South Africa
11 June 1996	Ernesto Zedillo	President of Mexico
23 February 1995	Bill Clinton	President of the United States
19 June 1992	Boris Yeltsin	President of Russia
8 April 1991	Carlos Salinas de Gortari	President of Mexico
18 June 1990	Nelson Mandela	Deputy President of the African National Congress
11 October 1989	Hussein	King of Jordan
27 June 1989	Chaim Herzog	President of Israel
22 June 1988	Margaret Thatcher	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
16 June 1988	Helmut Kohl	Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
10 May 1988	Beatrix	Queen of the Netherlands
25 May 1987	François Mitterrand	President of France
6 April 1987	Ronald Reagan	President of the United States
13 January 1986	Yasuhiro Nakasone	Prime Minister of Japan
7 March 1985	Javier Pérez de Cuéllar	Secretary General of the United Nations
8 May 1984	Miguel de la Madrid	President of Mexico
17 January 1984	Zhao Ziyang	Premier of the People's Republic of China
26 September 1983	Margaret Thatcher	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
11 March 1981	Ronald Reagan	President of the United States
26 May 1980	José López Portillo	President of Mexico
5 May 1980	Masayoshi Ohira	Prime Minister of Japan
19 June 1973	Indira Gandhi	Prime Minister of India
30 March 1973	Luis Echeverría	President of Mexico
14 April 1972	Richard Nixon	President of the United States
26 May 1964	U Thant	Secretary General of the United Nations
17 May 1961	John F. Kennedy	President of the United States
21 July 1958	Kwame Nkrumah	Prime Minister of Ghana
9 July 1958	Dwight D. Eisenhower	President of the United States
13 June 1958	Harold Macmillan	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
2 June 1958	Theodor Heuss	President of West Germany
4 March 1957	Guy Mollet	Prime Minister of France
5 June 1956	Sukarno	President of Indonesia
5 March 1956	Giovanni Gronchi	President of Italy
6 February 1956	Anthony Eden	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
14 November 1953	Dwight D. Eisenhower	President of the United States
5 April 1951	Vincent Auriol	President of France
31 May 1950	Liaquat Ali Khan	Prime Minister of Pakistan
24 October 1949	Jawaharlal Nehru	Prime Minister of India
11 June 1947	Harry S. Truman	President of the United States
19 November 1945	Clement Attlee	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
30 June 1944	Peter Fraser	Prime Minister of New Zealand
1 June 1944	John Curtin	Prime Minister of Australia
16 June 1943	Chiang Kai-shek	President of the Republic of China
3 June 1943	Edvard Beneš	President of Czechoslovakia
30 December 1941	Winston Churchill	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

You've got some genuine heavy hitters on the list; Churchill, Nehru, Truman, Eisenhower, Mandela...

And you've got a lot of sketchy second-stringers who's halos have faded with the passage of time.

Nixon, Blair, Thatcher, Karzai...

Hell, even Russian Prez Boris Yeltsin got an invite when the West thought we had him in our pocket!

But nobody has ever addressed the Canadian parliament after a political leadership career of mere months that has been a complete bloody disaster by any measure.