----- 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 Chrétien'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, Chrétien 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
Chrétien's taking his leave.
But Chrétien 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 Chrétien 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
Chrétien 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
Chrétien 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
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