Swearing in the new cabinet at Rideau Hall was a painful process. Maybe it would have worked better if all the retreads with the same portfolios got sworn in together. It was only the cabinet changes that the media and public wanted to examine. And I, for one, think a cabinet member should get one thing right before he (or she) gets a chance to screw up more serious matters.
I’ll bet you think I am going to bitch about Carolyn Bennett being kept in her ineffectual role of looking after aboriginal affairs. Well, I am not. I figure if the various councils and tribes, and pow-wows and reconciliations cannot come to grips with our aboriginal needs and wants, who am I to complain on their behalf.
While I am willing to give the new cabinet an opportunity to show its stuff, I do have one small caveat. I think that people such as Toronto’s Bill Blair should clean up the mess made in his pot-promoting lily pond before he goes on to more serious responsibility in a larger pond.
And what idiot thinks a police background is suitable experience to become a spy master? I think Bill Blair is the last person who should ever be in charge of intelligence. Admittedly, the Canadian Intelligence Security Service has always been a bit of a tongue in cheek affair but it is hardly a bunch of Keystone Kops! CSIS relies heavily on technology today to give it the leg-up it has among intelligence operations.
Blair has none of the technical background necessary to discuss clandestine surveillance in Five Eyes meetings. He is just not the sort of person you trust to protect our rights and freedoms. He was the person in charge of the police who broke trust with Canadians in June, 2010.
But the latest problem we have with Blair is the crock-up he has made of marijuana sales across Canada. By not understanding basic merchandising and a marketing rollout, he set the provinces up for a marketing disaster. I think it is fair that Blair should wear the dunce cap for the pot problem.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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