----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 10:28
AM
Subject: Whew, tell it like it is!
Dump this rotten crew of ministers
Barry Cooper and David Bercuson
Calgary Herald
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
The real measure of the new prime minister will be how quickly he rids
the nation of the rotten crew who have misgoverned Canada this past decade.
The country is currently suffering from the chokehold imposed on it by an
ageing Prime Minister long faded from whatever glory he once could command.
Today he seems capable only of swanning around the globe one last time at
taxpayers' expense for no purpose but to delay the transfer of
power.
Canada long ago should have had a new prime minster and Chr�tien's
staying until the very last grain of sand tumbles from the top of the hour
glass is yet one more sign of the style with which he has governed the country
for so many awful, shame-filled and shameful years.
Virtually single-handedly, Chr�tien has created a crisis that has come
perilously close to constitutional paralysis. He is blocking the new prime
minister from assuming power while he and his heavyweight ministers exercise
their fantasies as if they will control the public purse forever. If anything
could embarrass a Liberal, surely it must be the manner of Chr�tien's taking
his leave.
But Chr�tien is not alone to blame for the outrageous situation the
country is now in. The fish may rot from the head, but there are henchpersons
enough to share the responsibility. Take, for instance, the comedy unveiled in
the capital last week when the Transport Minister, David Collenette, long
known for his great affection for playing with trains, promised $700-million
of new funding for Via Rail Canada. Collenette can muse about public spending,
but he knows as well as anyone that the next government will have no
obligation to carry forward his intentions. Just as with the stroke of a pen
Chr�tien once cancelled the maritime helicopter contracts entered into by his
predecessor, which thereby cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of wasted
dollars and imposed an extra decade of that flying piece of junk known as the
Sea King on the Canadian Forces, so is Paul Martin free to disavow the
pseudo-commitments of his predecessors.
Collenette's announcement was derided in the Martin camp because as a
Chr�tien loyalist, he is more likely to be running a model railroad next
spring than to be minister in charge of Canadian transportation.
In response to the criticism from the Martinistas another star of the
Chr�tien team, Martin Cauchon, "warned" them that they will have to answer to
Canadians if they block badly needed investments, such as Collenette's trains.
Cauchon is an expert on badly needed investments, having presided over the
shredding of a billion bucks on the national gun registry. Unrepentant
regarding his part in this national fraud, he then arranged to throw good
money after bad, again in the direction of the registry.
Repentance may be in short supply in the office of the Justice Minister,
but there seemed to be plenty of it floating around in the circles frequented
by other senior Liberals last week. For several weeks Allan Rock had been
hounded by the press for refusing to admit that he had done anything wrong by
sharing the hospitality of the Irving family on their private jet and at their
private fishing lodge. Rock clung to a sliver of deniability until it
disappeared when his Cabinet colleague, Labour Minister Claudette Bradshaw,
unexpectedly apologized to the House of Commons for the same act. Clearly in
possession of a different moral compass than the ever moralistic Allan Rock,
she saw it was inappropriate to receive a gift from a corporation that owns
much of Atlantic Canada. Only then did Rock utter a halfhearted
apology.
Last Monday yet another Liberal minister rose to confess his sins.
Minister of the Environment, David Anderson, another poseur of rectitude,
clearly believed his portfolio in no way overlaps with any of the corporate
activities of the Irving family (despite the fact that an Irving barge sits
leaking at the bottom of the St. Lawrence River). Anderson said he visited the
fishing stream to study Atlantic salmon.
In the meantime, the comic contender for the Liberal leadership was doing
her own farewell global tour. Knowing full well that she will not survive the
change of government, Sheila Copps is doing her best to spend her department
allocation before the fiscal year and her own tenure run out.
These
old Liberals are so far from a sense of shame that they are immune from
embarrassment. We will learn soon enough if Martin is man enough to clean the
Augean stables of a decade of detritus.
_______________________
Scott MacLean
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ: 9184011
http://www.nerosoft.com
