You Had A Choice, Mr. Lake, You Could Have Said NO To Bigfoot

"Monkey Man" Mike Lake (Conservative MP for Edmonton, Mill Woods-Beaumont) employs the John Turner Defense when trying to explain why he has wasted the nation's precious time with a "save Bigfoot" petition that he presented to the HOC on behalf of a number of his constituents, primarily Bigfoot "discoverer" Todd Standing :

“You don’t make judgment calls on petitions,” Lake told Sun Media yesterday. “We try to do it as a service to constituents.”

Actually, this is false, perhaps deliberately so. You do make judgement calls on petitions, according to Petitioning The House of Commons: A Practical Guide

Nothing in the rules or practices of the House of Commons requires a Member to present a petition he or she has received. The Member may even ask another Member to present the petition.

So the question remains: why, Monkey Man, why? And further, why didn't known control freak Stephen Harper put a spike through this thing? Has he lost control of his back-benchers?