This would have run sooner if we had not written the weekend’s commentaries earlier last week. Have these Liberals learned nothing from watching former Prime Minister Harper over the years? Those hypocrites on the Conservative benches ridiculed the new and experimental House Leader who gamely tried to stick her fingers in the dike. The neophyte MP tried to stonewall the Conservative and New Democrat opposition
But then, to make matters worse, the Prime Minister’s Office caved in to the criticism. Justin Trudeau’s key people, Katie Telford and Gerald Butts said “Mia culpa” on their moving expenses and undid almost a year of hard work in the inner sanctum of Trudeau’s office. They made the prime minister look naïve and made themselves look twice as guilty by promising to return some of the expense money.
Did anyone think to check with a firm that supplies re-location services to business? Looking at the figures that were released, it appears that the government got off on the cheap.
And there are nine years of figures available to compare the costs of moving Conservatives in similar positions to and from Ottawa. Somebody finally got around to look at those—and could have included a ratio for inflation.
At a time when the Conservatives needed something to entertain them, the new Liberal House Leader was hardly doing her job. And where Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef was born did not qualify for any discussion. Anyone who can find the border of Iran and Afghanistan on a map of the world would know that the one objective of anyone born there is to get out of that land that God forgot.
But the point of this is that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can forget his promises to the voters, he can forget his promises to the environmentalists, he can forget his promises to our first peoples but the last people you desert are your staff. You forget them at your peril because you will never get people as loyal again. Any replacement you hire will be aware that you threw their predecessor under the bus. You can never live that down. It was the beginning of the end for Mr. Harper. It could also eventually prove to be the turning point for Justin Trudeau.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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