Why is it the people you like who can really screw things up? And what could be a safer job for MP Marc Garneau than Minister of Transport? You would think the former astronaut and head of Canada’s space agency would have more smarts than to pander to the juvenile audience on Twitter. You would also think he would understand the biased opinion of Toronto MP Adam Vaughan and use some discretion.
Marc was acting more like you would expect from the Harper government than a new broom that Justin Trudeau promises.
Decisions about Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Islands are supposed to be tri-lateral. As things stand the Toronto port authority, Toronto council and Transport Canada have an agreement in place barring jets from the Toronto island airport. This ban is being challenged by Porter Airlines and multi-million dollar studies are underway at the port authority at the request of the city to determine the feasibility of jets at the airport. The studies are specifically on using the new Bombardier C-Series planes that are being developed in Canada. The port authority has yet to report on its findings and city council has had no opportunity to understand the considerations or to vote.
But Garneau has decided to arbitrarily dump on the entire process. And he did it on Twitter as though it was just a casual thought.
Maybe he was getting the entire story from MP Adam Vaughan whose electoral district includes the Toronto Islands and port area. Vaughan might be a favourite choice of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau but what Marc would not know is that Vaughan was one of the infamous group of downtown councillors who try to block anything progressive at city council. Vaughan makes no secret of his blind opposition to any expansion of Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport services.
As Minister of Transport, Garneau has likely not seen any information from his department on the questions involved in this decision. While newcomers to the political scene in the cabinet have been very good about telling the media that they are waiting for briefings from their departments, Garneau must have missed that suggestion.
It will be interesting to see how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau treats this failure in his cabinet. Getting your foot out of your mouth is tougher for people with grey hair.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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