Tom Clark’s West Block show on Global went back to its half-hour format last Sunday. Tom was away and it was a return to boredom. If we really wanted to be bored that much, we could have gone to church. Just look at the line up for the show on Sunday:
The first guest was the long-serving Ralph Goodale MP from Regina. Goodale is supposed to be a Liberal but seems to always get elected by reassuring his constituents that he is more fiscally conservative than either his Conservative or New Democrat opponents. Goodale did a typical political run-around of all the questions asked of him and we were glad when the interviewer finally got a chance to say “Thank you.”
Next was Major-General (Retired) Lewis Mackenzie. Maybe the producers meant the interview with the general to be funny. He actually told that nice reporter Vassy Kapeolos that the only way the Liberals could bring in anywhere near 25,000 Syrian refugees in the next several months was by bringing in only widows with children. He actually said this category did not need security clearances.
That shows you that former soldiers neither make good immigration ministers nor financial advisers. These are not Filles des Roi we are importing to correct any boy-girl discrepancy. MacKenzie seemed to have no idea of the economic cost to the public of bringing just single parent families to our country.
To round out the children’s half hour, the next guest was Canada’s former Finance Minister Joe Oliver—who was seriously trounced last Monday in his Toronto riding. Of all the Conservatives defeated in this year’s election, Joe Oliver might have been the last to realize he did not have a job anymore.
There used to be a Progressive Conservative Party in Canada that had a heart. It cared about people. It understood the responsibilities of government. It understood that government was there to serve people. The Harper government never understood that. It thought government was there to serve an ideology. So did Joe Oliver.
Luckily Vassy Kapeolos was rescued in the last interview slot by Mark Kennedy of the Ottawa Citizen. Mark is a regular on Tom Clark’s show because he is a very smart observer of political Ottawa. He brought the viewers who stuck it out to the end up-to-date on the challenges ahead for the new government. He also thinks that the Conservative Party could use a good psychiatrist.
Hopefully, Tom Clark will be back soon.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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