How can Prime Minister Stephen Harper even begin to create a new cabinet? There is no second tier of his caucus ready to step up to the task. In fact, it is hard to tell the bottom of the barrel from the contenders. The word ‘effete’ comes to mind when considering Harper’s Parliamentary caucus. To say they are just tired and feeble is to compliment them. The Conservative caucus is a sorry lot with sorrier prospects. And yet all the pundits are calling for a cabinet shakeup.
Bev Oda’s recent resignation from cabinet was the first improvement to the cabinet in a long time. Mind you, promoting a cop such as Julian Fantino to handle international cooperation is an obtuse gesture. It is as though of Harper were to take the podium at the United Nations and give the rest of the world the finger!
And then there are the Bobbsey twins? They represent Canada to the rest of the uncooperative world. We think of these Bobbsey twins as lemmings rushing for the precipice. They are Foreign Affairs’ John Baird and Citizenship’s Jason Kenney. You are forgiven if you get these two ideologues confused.
Kenney is the twin in the news recently for winning the award for self aggrandizement. There really is a form in his web site where you are invited to compliment him for saving taxpayers money by not helping refugee claimants with medical problems. Luckily most of Canada’s doctors have signed the version of the Hippocratic Oath that promises to do no harm.
If you think about it, you realize that this Harper cabinet minister has disgraced our country and its reputation for less than 0.000001 per cent of national health care costs.
We keep waiting breathlessly for Prime Minister Harper to consider the MP from Babel for his cabinet. What this kid really wants is Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s job. He wants to have his picture taken in a mock-up of an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. He could send autographed copies, suitable for framing, to every Babel voter.
Another wannabe on the back benches, waiting for Harper’s call-up, is Chris Alexander, MP for Ajax-Pickering. He spent many years in Canada’s foreign service and was considered the go-to guy with Afghanistan’s tribal leader Hamid Karzai. If anyone knows how much it will take to bribe Karzai to release Canada’s war materiel that was stupidly left in Afghanistan, Alexander should.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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