To the Editor:
There's been much chatter about Stephen Harper's "massive" cabinet shuffle as a "new beginning" for a government that has squandered a lot of the public's trust. Amid the fuss about the makeover, it's good to keep things in perspective.
To start with, here's the basic question - why are such changes necessary?
Mr. Harper is not rearranging his deck chairs as some voluntary amusement. He's changing things because he has to. Increasing numbers of Canadians believe his government is taking this country in the wrong direction. Conservative popularity has dropped. Mr. Harper's personal credibility is suffering.
So how has this government become so out of sync with so many Canadians? The causes are likely threefold:
Their behaviour is just too antagonistic and relentlessly partisan;
Many of their key policies are at odds with most Canadians' expectations;
There's mounting evidence of serious wrong-doing.
Does a cabinet shuffle change all that? No. A few new faces may create a diversion that allows Mr. Harper to change the channel, for awhile. But after the novelty wears off, the same underlying problems remain - abusive tactics, cross-threaded policies and ethical failures - because the only Minister who matters, Mr. Harper himself, will still be calling all the shots.
He was the one who approved the procurement strategy for the F-35 fighter-jets, which both the Auditor-General and the Parliamentary Budget Officer called incompetent and deceitful. He was the one who decided to cut frontline services for such things as immigration, employment insurance, agriculture, and public health and safety.
It was Mr. Harper who eviscerated environmental protection, undermined the census, eliminated any meaningful federal role in healthcare, limited Old Age Security, and refused to meet the provinces on any topic from job training to energy policy.
It's also Mr. Harper who sets the template for not answering questions in the House of Commons, blocking public access to information, wasting millions on government advertising, and personally attacking public servants, scientists, church groups, charities, public interest watchdogs, even Officers of Parliament.
On Mr. Harper's watch, his Conservatives have had to plead guilty to election financing offences. They're under investigation for numerous other campaign violations in Labrador and Peterborough. And there's the "robocall" electoral fraud scam which began with Conservatives in Guelph, and may have contaminated more than 200 other ridings.
A cabinet shuffle doesn't change any of that. Neither does it fix an operating mentality in the Prime Minister's Office which leads senior Harper officials to believe it's okay to cut a big cheque to a sitting legislator - which altered the course of a forensic audit and is now under criminal investigation.
Ralph Goodale, MP, Wascana, SK.
