The Baying Hounds
They're at it again. Beside themselves with satisfaction that yet another issue has arisen, developed into the potential to embarrass and completely unsettle the government. The Prime Minister must, at the very least, release Bev Oda from the Cabinet. She has disgraced Parliament, she cannot be trusted, she is the obvious lackey of the Prime Minister.
For his part, the Prime Minister insists that Ministers of the Crown have been democratically elected and appointed to the task of administering government policy. It is not the bureaucrats, he insists, who formulate and prosecute the government agenda, but the departmental minister tasked with that function. Bureaucrats may advise, but Ministers take that advice under advisement.
They are under no obligation to agree with, nor to honour, nor to function as the automatic signer of policy which does not reflect their studied and informed values. And, matter of fact, it is the Prime Minister, democratically elected to represent the voters' wishes and installed as the leader of government, to pursue the federal agenda who is the lawmaker and final arbiter.
The opposition parties, their leaders and their many official government critics have been busy putting forward what they consider to be "plausible theories" about motivation and failures to proceed in a manner they deem to have been ordained by past experience. They claim a new political agenda to be involved in the matter of denying funding to KAIROS.
Hot damn! they're right! They're also right that there's something not quite right about a Minister who resorts to denials and truth-skirting when a simple yea or nay response should do; the acceptance of personal responsibility. Which did arrive at the stable, but a little late; after, in fact, the herd had already stampeded.
It's the sturm and drung they are intoxicated with. The opportunity to make accusations and plenty of satisfying noise, and act out their dismayed disbelief, denouncing the perfidious manner of a Parliamentarian. Who may or may not be found guilty of something above prevarication. And shame on her.
Seems, though, that a government has both the right and the obligation to make that kind of determination; whether a long-standing agreement between CIDA and an agency with many and multifarious connections is still acting in the best possible interests of Canada, since it is the taxpayer that has been funding it.
Ho-hum.
For his part, the Prime Minister insists that Ministers of the Crown have been democratically elected and appointed to the task of administering government policy. It is not the bureaucrats, he insists, who formulate and prosecute the government agenda, but the departmental minister tasked with that function. Bureaucrats may advise, but Ministers take that advice under advisement.
They are under no obligation to agree with, nor to honour, nor to function as the automatic signer of policy which does not reflect their studied and informed values. And, matter of fact, it is the Prime Minister, democratically elected to represent the voters' wishes and installed as the leader of government, to pursue the federal agenda who is the lawmaker and final arbiter.
The opposition parties, their leaders and their many official government critics have been busy putting forward what they consider to be "plausible theories" about motivation and failures to proceed in a manner they deem to have been ordained by past experience. They claim a new political agenda to be involved in the matter of denying funding to KAIROS.
Hot damn! they're right! They're also right that there's something not quite right about a Minister who resorts to denials and truth-skirting when a simple yea or nay response should do; the acceptance of personal responsibility. Which did arrive at the stable, but a little late; after, in fact, the herd had already stampeded.
It's the sturm and drung they are intoxicated with. The opportunity to make accusations and plenty of satisfying noise, and act out their dismayed disbelief, denouncing the perfidious manner of a Parliamentarian. Who may or may not be found guilty of something above prevarication. And shame on her.
Seems, though, that a government has both the right and the obligation to make that kind of determination; whether a long-standing agreement between CIDA and an agency with many and multifarious connections is still acting in the best possible interests of Canada, since it is the taxpayer that has been funding it.
Ho-hum.
Labels: Conflict, Crisis Politics, Government of Canada
posted by Pieface | 7:43 PM
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