Thursday, April 12, 2007

The Great Helmsman's Fingerprints

The "brilliant" political strategist, Steve Harper, struck again yssterday. His never-ending quest to gain more seats in Quebec was without question, behind his appointment of separatist Daniel Paillé to investigate polling practices in the previous Liberal government. Strange, or maybe bizzare, are the words I would use to describe this farce. In the first place, Harper had his political minister for Quebec (the unelected and therefore unaccountable) Michael Fortier, rather than the minister responsible for the file, the elected but not Quebec friendly Vic Toews, announce the inquiry. Second, the focus of this inquiry is very narrow to the point of being useless. Why was government advertising left out of the brief? Could it be that Tories don't want their own practices examined? Finally, the appointment of Mr. Paillé (though I have no reason to doubt his sincerity) has been tainted because there was no transparency in the process used to appoint him. The Accountability Act has a an appointment commissioner in it to add this needed transparency, but the Harper government has not enacted that part of the law.

The taxpayers are paying $750,000 for this farce. We don't need to spend that money to know the Liberals were no good (you will note they are no longer the government). I guess for Steve, price is no object when trying to build a majority -- even when the money he uses belongs to someone else.

Update: As usual, Mr. Wells sheds some light on this whole benighted project.
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