Thursday, July 12, 2007

It's like The Sopranos : Stupid Pet Tricks Edition

With parliament adjourned for the summer and MPs back in their ridings hiding out/working the handshaking smiling barbie circuit, The Tyee reviews the five cabinet ministers from BC.
And lo, what Lotusland hath bequeathed to parliamentary democracy!

Jay Hill (Con - Prince George-Peace River)
Secretary of State and Chief Government Whip
~ The 200 page dirty tricks manual on how to subvert subcommittees not towing the Con line.

  • Make sure the Conservative Party of Canada -- the party, not the government -- gets a say in which witnesses appear before the committee.
  • If all else fails, shut the committee down.
Also leaked to the press was Hill's bullying of committee chairs who tried to get some work done on the committees rather than sabotaging them.

David Emerson (Con - Vancouver Kingsway)
Minister of International Trade and 2010 Olympics
~ Following an overnight conversion to the Cons after being elected as a Lib, with Emerson's invaluable expertise as a softwood lumber deal negotiator used as the justification, Emerson pushed through a deal - trade peace in our time, in TheTyee's happy phrase - which had the US threatening further litigation against Canada within six months.
~ The Five Ring Corporate Boondoggle and Homelessness Circus.
Nuff said.

Chuck Strahl (Con - Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon)
Minister of Agriculture, Agri-Food, and the Canadian Wheat Board
~ The Agri Min with the distinction of going to war against the Canadian Wheat Board, the most successful grain monopoly in the world. Tactics included "misleading plebiscite options; issuing 'gag orders' against CWB directors and staff; firing the CWB president during the election; arbitrarily changing the voters' list during the election; disenfranchising thousands of producers; sending multiple, numbered ballots to producers, then calling them to ask which ballot they wanted counted; no third-party spending limits".

Stockwell Day (Con - Okanagan-Coquihalla)
Minister of Public Safety
~ A rousing success really, compared to what we expected from him.
Aside from deciding not to hold a public inquiry into how the RCMP fucked over Maher Arar, making contradictory claims in the HoC regarding Afghan detainees, denying climate change on his blog, and being under RCMP investigation for paying off a political rival not to run against him, Doris exceeded all our expectations.

Gary Lunn (Con - Saanich-Gulf Islands)
Minister of Natural Resources
~ Bring on the nukes for the tar sands! Moratorium on oil tanker traffic off theBC coast? What moratorium? Apparently it was merely a gentlemen's agreement, according to Lunn.
~ Firing a government scientist who objected to introducing his work with the phrase "Canada's New Government", and then having to hire him back after the laughter subsided.

And so the legacy of Amor de Cosmos lives on.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

*sigh*

Chuck's my MP. When I sent an email asking him to support same sex marriage, his office immediately began bombarding me with emails promoting "family values". What an idiot.

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