James Moore, enfant terrible of B.C. politics has quit. He is going home to care for his family. He will be missed. Despite his serious gaff at one time of saying “Is it my job to feed my neighbour’s child? I don’t think so.” he was one of the few less strident Progressive Conservatives in the Harper Cabinet. He has now left a clear path for ‘Minister of Everything Else’ Jason Kenney to assume Harper’s leadership mantle after the Tories fail to win the 2015 election.
Moore, a former radio personality, and one time Minister of Canadian Heritage, was Harper’s point man in hamstringing the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. We once watched some of his staff at work at a Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission hearing. They were so ham-handed in trying to manipulate the hearing that we got the impression that their minister was not that enthusiastic and that the staff had got their instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office. The CRTC commissioners were certainly getting some mixed signals.
Despite the odd misstep, Moore has been the natural successor to Peter MacKay as a middle of the road Conservative. He was the political minister for B.C. and built a strong following in the province.
There were high hopes for some government effort in better employment efforts when Moore took over the Minister of Industry role in mid-2013. In two years, we certainly were not wowed by the progress—close to none.
But Moore remains well liked by some of his cabinet colleagues—those who are left anyway. Neither MacKay nor Moore has been very successful though in influencing the Harper government’s direction in pandering to the rich in Canada.
It will be an interesting experience for Canadians to have someone such as Jason Kenney vying for their political attention. He was the one who showed Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Leader Patrick Brown how to swamp the provincial party memberships with wholesale lots of immigrant members. His Alberta base would probably not allow Kenney to try that federally. Mind you, he has been left with no competition for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership.
Moore will be missed.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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