In recent years, we have had the fun of writing about the Bobbsey twins of the Harper cabinet. Specifically, they have been Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Employment Minister Jason Kenny. While it has been pointed out to us that one of the original Bobbsey twins was female and the other male, their stories that we read as children made them out as androgynous.
And even as an adult, who cares if one or both or neither of them share Oscar Wilde’s bent. Two, somewhat portly, single gentlemen in their mid forties can be anything they want and who cares—other than a mother having to search elsewhere for grandchildren.
But what is all this weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the loss of John Baird from parliament. What was his contribution? What did he accomplish?
Were those crocodile tears we saw in parliament as he made his leave? He had the obligatory hug from Prime Minister Harper but nothing was said publicly. The opposition were polite but other than Paul Dewar of the New Democrats, the comments could be taken as ambiguous.
There was no moral authority to his role as Foreign Affairs Minister. He was a hypocrite in Jerusalem and a coward in Kiev. He neither tried to understand the Muslim world nor did he care for their concerns. He got his marching orders from the Prime Minister’s Office and he grinned, gritted his teeth and got on with what he was told to do.
It was Jason Kenney setting the pins in that bowling alley and Baird bowled his best games.
He learned his trade under Ontario’s Premier Michael Harris—a man reviled for his ideological approach to the political task. And what Harris could not understand, he destroyed. Harris did irreparable damage during his tenure in Ontario and Baird was an eager acolyte.
There is something both amusing and sad to imagining the choice of careers open to John Baird in the private sector. He is going there to get out of the spotlight, follow his own drummer, enjoy himself, make money and moral clarity be damned.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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