This is one of the easiest calls of the month. The Liberal Party would have done themselves a big favor by joining the Conservative Party and the you’ve got to be kidding party and renouncing this lousy appointment.
The National Post’s editorial says it all:
Shapiro must go
[…] Nearly every important file he has taken up has been mishandled:
– For the investigation into allegations that former immigration minister Judy Sgro had given preferential treatment to certain immigration applicants, he hired a Liberal-friendly firm to do his legwork, then issued a letter to Ms. Sgro that allowed her to proclaim her innocence in the House of Commons before he had released his final conclusions. And when he did issue a report (the absurdly titled Shades of Grey), he twisted himself in knots to avoid actually passing judgment.
– For the Gurmant Grewal affair, he refused to investigate Tim Murphy—the former chief of staff to Paul Martin, who was central to the controversy surrounding attempts to win the Conservative MP’s support in a confidence vote.
– Last September, in an interview with CanWest News Service, he inexplicably began making excuses for the sponsorship scandal—the biggest ethical debacle in modern Canadian history—on the basis that the federal government had been exploited by private business as Ottawa responded to the “near-death experience” of the 1995 Quebec referendum.
– And, most egregiously, he went public last fall with an investigation into unsubstantiated allegations that Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai had taken money to fast-track immigration applications—an act for which Mr. Shapiro was ultimately found in contempt of Parliament.
To this point, Mr. Shapiro’s transgressions seemed to have had more to do with incompetence than partisanship. But in the wake of his decision to investigate Mr. Emerson’s switch of party loyalties, it is hard to be sure. Even the staunchest critics of the Tories’ recruitment of the former Liberal Cabinet minister would be hard-pressed to make a serious case that it broke ethics rules—certainly no more so than last year’s crossing from the Tories to the Liberals by Belinda Stronach (which notably was not investigated).
[…] It is not only the Conservatives who recognize that it is time for Mr. Shapiro to go. Before his retirement from Parliament, former NDP leader Ed Broadbent—among the country’s most respected parliamentarians—called on Mr. Shapiro to resign. […]
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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