Canada’s Liberal government has established a pattern of always being caught on vacation or “out of town” when world crises hit. They are thus even slower to respond than they would have been otherwise, which is already s-l-o-w.
This is perplexing for me since Canada, the country that “leads the world” at saving the world according to Liberal Prime Minister Martin, should be instantly reacting and, well, leading the world. Our Foreign Affairs Minister, for example, should be leading the charge on an almost constant basis, as a member of the leading the world cabinet.
But this article in the Ottawa Citizen sheds some light on why he isn’t:
PARIS – On a cobbled street named for one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s favourite subjects, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew owns a small apartment that he visits regularly, making the home in the fabled Montmartre district an unofficial outpost of Canada’s foreign office.
While Mr. Pettigrew spends time in Paris, some critics charge, he has been absent on important issues requiring visible leadership and instead has left the heavy lifting to cabinet colleagues and his departmental staff.
That Mr. Pettigrew maintains a Parisian pied-a-terre is no secret. He purchased the apartment, a few blocks from the Montmartre cemetery, before he entered politics and listed it in his public declaration of assets filed with the federal ethics commissioner.
But in the words of one Foreign Affairs official, Mr. Pettigrew’s time abroad has left him “itinerant on monster files” such as the Asian tsunami and London subway bombings.
Ready for some more of that Liberal arrogance? You know you are! And you know no story about our Liberal government is complete without a good dose of that abject liberal arrogance and insults to our intelligence. Here we go: Mr. Pettigrew’s press secretary, Sebastien Theberge, says “I think it’s a little unfair to question the time he spends outside the country.”
How stupid and unfair of us. Better we question the amount of time President George Bush spends “vacationing” in Texas each summer. Oh you mean Texas is part of the United States? Oh well whatever.
Mr. Pettigrew has been overseas during some of the most pressing crises to hit his department in the last two years.
He was in Paris when the tsunami devastated South Asia last Christmas and, along with a holidaying Prime Minister Paul Martin, drew fire for Canada’s sluggish response in the first days after the disaster.
He did not return to Ottawa for several days after the tsunami while Foreign Affairs officials scrambled to locate Canadian tourists and put together an aid package.
Defence Minister Bill Graham was left holding the ball for cabinet in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. Mr. Graham publicly defended the absence of the government’s most senior members, saying the scope of the disaster “took some time for us to absorb.”
But he was reportedly angered by Mr. Pettigrew’s absence and suggested—in strong language—that the foreign minister return to Ottawa, post haste. A similar message was passed on by the Prime Minister’s Office.
[…] Mr. Pettigrew was again caught in Paris in July, during the terrorist attacks on the London underground. And when bombers struck a market in Sharm el-Sheikh, a popular Egyptian tourist destination, his parliamentary secretary, MP Dan McTeague, was brought out to answer media questions about possible Canadian casualties.
This sentence in the story may be the most telling of all, and may explain better than anything his frequent absences (or may not—I don’t know—it’s in the story so it’s worth contemplating since he’s a liberal, and since the Liberals together with the NDP are working hard—back in Canada—on drawing up new legislation to legalize prostitution in Canada):
[…] Mr. Pettigrew’s apartment is also a short walk from Pigalle, the red-light district with its peep shows and sex shops.
But this sentence is from another Liberal, so you know it’s true:
[…] Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein said he was “puzzled and underwhelmed” by the government’s reaction to Katrina.
I’m “puzzled and underwhelmed” too.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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