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| Martin must clean out the Chretien stable - Friday, October 31, 2003 at 13:21 |
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Column: Martin must clean out the Chretien stable
------------------------------------------------------------------------ The real measure of the new prime minister will be how quickly he rids the nation of the rotten crew that has misgoverned Canada this past decade. The country is suffering from the choke hold imposed on it by an aging 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 the taxpayers' expense for no purpose but to delay the transfer of power. Canada long ago should have had a new prime minster and Jean Chretien's staying until the very last grain of sand tumbles from the top of the hourglass 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 singlehandedly, Chretien 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 Chretien's taking his leave. But Chretien 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 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 the next government will have no obligation to carry forward his intentions. Just as with the stroke of a pen, Chretien 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 Chretien 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 Chretien team, Martin Cauchon, "warned" them 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 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 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 half-hearted apology. Last Monday, yet another Liberal minister rose to confess his sins. Environment Minister 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 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 she would 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 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. Barry Cooper is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, where David Bercuson is director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies. |