Sgro Must Go
"Ministers' staff also have an obligation to meet with people when they are asked to do so. That is exactly what the staff member was doing," she replied to hoots of laughter from the opposition benches. – Immigration Minister Judy Sgro.
According to government records, more than 550 exotic dancers from Rumania were granted temporary work visas last year. It seems exotic dancing is one of those essential Canadian vocations whose many positions are very difficult to fill with local talent. This is classically Canadian isn’t it? 550 spots in our immigration queue taken up by desperate young women, most of whom will be drawn into the sex and drug trade.
It is unclear how many of them were recruited by Minister Sgro’s sublimely named chief of staff, the donkey-headed Ihor Wons; or how many of them stuffed envelopes or worked phone banks for Minister Sgro during her re-election campaign.
There is this quaint principle British parliamentarians have, one which Canada long ago abandoned, perhaps as part of shedding its colonial ties. It is the principle of Ministerial responsibility. In practice, when the action of a Minister or her staff is so scandalous or inappropriate that it brings the department and the government into disrepute, the Minister immediately resigns. If it later proves that the Minister should bear no responsibility for the scandal she is often reinstated to Cabinet, if not always to the same portfolio.
So fearful are Canadian ministers of being relegated to the gulag of the back bench, and of the loss of the perquisites of office, that they act like desperate cats scratching and spitting in a vain attempt to avoid being pitched into the pool of political oblivion. And once finally pried from their perch, the more wicked ones still land on their feet with some ambassadorship or taxpayer funded sinecure.
Meanwhile, that shepherd of cats, Mr. Paul Martin, slouches through Africa cursing his fate, his incompetence as a leader more apparent every day. Perhaps he is hoping to find support for his silent campaign to be recruited as successor to the failed statesman Koffi Annan.
I think I will invite Mr. Wons to our next book club when we discuss the madness of another regime in Bulgakov’s, The Master and Margarita. He can’t refuse once asked, remember.
According to government records, more than 550 exotic dancers from Rumania were granted temporary work visas last year. It seems exotic dancing is one of those essential Canadian vocations whose many positions are very difficult to fill with local talent. This is classically Canadian isn’t it? 550 spots in our immigration queue taken up by desperate young women, most of whom will be drawn into the sex and drug trade.
It is unclear how many of them were recruited by Minister Sgro’s sublimely named chief of staff, the donkey-headed Ihor Wons; or how many of them stuffed envelopes or worked phone banks for Minister Sgro during her re-election campaign.
There is this quaint principle British parliamentarians have, one which Canada long ago abandoned, perhaps as part of shedding its colonial ties. It is the principle of Ministerial responsibility. In practice, when the action of a Minister or her staff is so scandalous or inappropriate that it brings the department and the government into disrepute, the Minister immediately resigns. If it later proves that the Minister should bear no responsibility for the scandal she is often reinstated to Cabinet, if not always to the same portfolio.
So fearful are Canadian ministers of being relegated to the gulag of the back bench, and of the loss of the perquisites of office, that they act like desperate cats scratching and spitting in a vain attempt to avoid being pitched into the pool of political oblivion. And once finally pried from their perch, the more wicked ones still land on their feet with some ambassadorship or taxpayer funded sinecure.
Meanwhile, that shepherd of cats, Mr. Paul Martin, slouches through Africa cursing his fate, his incompetence as a leader more apparent every day. Perhaps he is hoping to find support for his silent campaign to be recruited as successor to the failed statesman Koffi Annan.
I think I will invite Mr. Wons to our next book club when we discuss the madness of another regime in Bulgakov’s, The Master and Margarita. He can’t refuse once asked, remember.
posted by Ben Buan | 8:50 p.m.
<< Home