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06 10th, 2009| 
It’s been a fantastic week for Canadian democracy. And it’s only Wednesday.
Where to begin, perhaps with Minister of Transportation, John “Rusty” Baird, telling Toronto to “f— off”? Naw, here at Idiocracy Watch we’ve become accustomed to Baird’s pitbullish style. Usually Baird barely manages to keep his rage contained by his manufactured calm, a task that must occupy most of his waking hours (I often wonder if he uses meditation or drugs to accomplish what little self-control he demonstrates). But at times, like a Mentos fed Diet Coke, he spews forth a raging torrent of incoherent rhetoric, sweat pouring from his red face, veins popping wildly in an insufferable show of toddler-like behaviour. During the winter “coalition crisis” he referred to Quebec politicians angrily as “devils”, and now he curses an entire city over some obscure (and dubitable) accusation of bureaucratic mishandling. He appears to have grown into a man in age only, suffering from a form of perennial Terrible Twos.
Then there’s Lisa Raitt, Minister of Natural Resources, who was caught on tape referring to the current medical isotope shortage as a “sexy” issue, sure to help her career profile because of its link to cancer.
Yeah, cancer!
True, cancer is a high profile disease. True, intense media coverage showing how a person successfully deals with a crisis can only help one’s career.
But here’s a pop quiz for the entire Harper government:
Question: Boasting excitedly about the potential personal gains of a medical isotope shortage that is guaranteed to cause harm to thousands of Canadians is a defensible, and morally acceptable, action. True or False?
Raitt’s answer: True.
More incredulously, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s answer turns out to be…you guessed it: True!
Indeed, Harper went so far as to stand up in the House of Commons to issue a public defense of Raitt’s comments on the grounds that she’s working hard to get the job done.
Allow me to respond to Harper by simultaneously borrowing pages from his and Jack Layton’s play books…
Idiocracy Watch has spoken to Canadians, and they are responding to your defense with a resounding, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Before yesterday I would have thought the PM understood that working hard is the bare minimum requirement for a ministerial position. There are any number of individuals who could “work hard” in place of Raitt. Many of them are currently sitting opposite the government in the House of Commons. What sets a person apart for a ministerial position is their ability to work hard and actually care about the files they are tasked with.
That Harper doesn’t seem to understand that is what Canadians want in a minister is a testament to the man’s inner workings.
Put another way, I suppose it makes sense that Harper would defend Raitt, he must see himself in her in more than one way. He has consistently put party politics before promise, before sincerity, and before principal–actions that have left his own party wondering who their Leader really is. Stephen Harper consistently exposes himself as a man primarily wedded to power politics over all else. From time to time we’ve pictured Harper this way. His defense of Raitt’s comments is only the latest proof that the traits some may think are unfairly attributed to him are more or less on the mark.
Conservative apologists are claiming Raitt is only human. Well, that goes without saying. But there are good humans and humans who are not so good, humans who understand and care about the human costs of certain political decisions and those who struggle understanding such things, humans who know when to put the needs of others ahead of their personal needs and those who do not, humans who are highly qualified for certain important political postings and those who are not.
It is unfortunate for all of us that Baird, Raitt, but more importantly Harper, all seem to fall into the latter of all of the above dichotomies. It’s doubly unfortunate that it may be unrealistic for us to think that Harper can care about such things.
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A postscript to this story: We have an apology from Raitt. The CPC hired someone to write it, though I suppose that’s common practice. Raitt has still done nothing to assuage my sense that deep down, she’s glad there’s an isotope shortage that she gets to deal with–and that’s the problem.
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