It would be better to note the resignation of Prime Minister Harper but a change of guard at Finance is a small start. At least we will not have Jim Flaherty croaking from the lily pond any more. Flaherty has been on divergent paths with the big frog Stephen Harper for the past several months and his abrupt resignation was not unexpected.
A cabinet position in government is very much like the frogs in a lily pond. If you croak too loudly, you draw attention from predators. If you are quiet, others jump on your lily-pad and you are in danger of drowning. And if you all croak too loud in unison, you are liable to annoy the neighbouring homeowners and they will end up draining the lily pond.
But how long a hard-ass such as Joe Oliver can sit on the Finance lily-pad, we have no idea? All we know is that he has none of the leprechaun instincts of Jim Flaherty and there is no pot of gold waiting for Oliver. All Joe Oliver has proved in the Environment portfolio is that there are great gaps between him and the truth and his loyalty to the chief frog is unquestioned.
All of this means that you are most unlikely to hear of Joe Oliver fighting with that nice cabinet colleague Jason Kenney from Calgary. Mind you, Joe Oliver might not be a close friend of Mr. Harper’s fishing buddy, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford either but that might not be a problem for long. The one thing for sure is that Oliver is not going to question Stephen Harper’s commitment to income splitting promised for next year’s election.
It would be unfair to say that Joe Oliver has done nothing in his past three years as Natural Resources Minister. He actually believes that Canadians are wonderful hewers of wood. He has made speeches commending Canadians for cutting down trees. It is only when wondering what else he has accomplished for Canadians that you begin to question.
We are all looking forward to learning what Joe Oliver will want to do in his new job. He has done just about nothing in his old job and some of us might not be surprised if he does nothing but what he is told in his new job.
But how a hard-ass like Oliver can sit on a lily pad for long is the real question.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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