Roundup: Buttressing the Fantino problem

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You may think that Julian Fantino’s days in cabinet are numbered. Tone deaf to his file and to the particular needs of veterans, for a government that has tried to make the military a point of pride, Fantino has pretty much been a robotic disaster on par with the reprogrammed Robot from the Lost in Space reboot film. But don’t think that will be enough to convince Stephen Harper to decide it’s time to shuffle the cabinet and oust Fantino. No – that would be a sign that he made a mistake, and of weakness, and well, that simply couldn’t be done. Instead, there has been a great deal of shuffling of the deck chairs – moving retired General Walt Natynczyk to head the department as Deputy Minister, and now the PMO’s director of media relations, Stephen Lecce, has been reassigned as Fantino’s chief of staff – at least on an interim basis. In other words, everything is being done to buttress Fantino from the outside, but short of completely reinstalling his duotronic databanks with a new personality matrix, I’m not sure that it will help. I will add that Leona Aglukkaq’s decision to spend Question Period yesterday reading a newspaper while serious questions were being asked about the food crisis in her own riding were being asked was also not good optics, but as of yet, there are no calls for her resignation, not that it would have any success either, as she is too much of a needed symbol in the cabinet for Harper to let her go for any reason short of leaving briefing binders within reach of the associates of biker gangs.

Good reads:

  • The Conservatives defeated all attempts to amend the CSIS bill, including statutory review. Try to look surprised, everyone!
  • The tale of that surreptitiously recorded Liberal candidate – or not – gets even stranger as another audio expert reviewed the file and cast all kinds of doubt on the analysis of the expert the Conservatives hired. And the plot continues to thicken.
  • Michael Sona has been released on $20,000 bail pending the appeal of his conviction.
  • TransCanada is halting work on an oil terminal in eastern Quebec because of concerns that it could harm a beluga whale habitat.
  • Canada saw the lowest homicide rate since 1966. But OMG CRIME!
  • With Canadians fighting in Iraq with Kurdish forces on an unofficial basis, it’s worth a reminder that we don’t have a hostage policy for our nationals. But at least John Baird distanced the government from Blaney’s ridiculous statement that the government wouldn’t stand in the way of those who want to head over to fight, by saying that those who want to fight ISIS should enlist in the Canadian Forces.
  • Thalidomide survivors got their meeting with Rona Ambrose, while the NDP motion passed the Commons unanimously (though really, it was like voting for apple pie).
  • Here is the sordid tale of the government trying to dispose of the remnants of the Canadian Wheat Board.
  • For some reason, the government has seen fit to have James Bezan personally deliver supplies to Ukraine – twice.

Odds and ends:

Milkwood can help clean up oil spills, and is good for monarch butterflies!

The riding of Elgin–Middlesex–London could see mother and daughter battling one another on the ballot.

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