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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Harper gets a red card

Conservatives leave the pitch with more red cards and own goals than points

When MPs gathered in Ottawa back in October 2013, Jim Flaherty was still finance minister, Mike Duffy was a senator, the prime minister had a secret plan to announce a free trade deal with the European Union and he was optimistic about the Keystone pipeline.

Eight months later, as MPs head back to their ridings, Flaherty is no longer with us, Duffy has been ousted, there still is no free trade deal, and the Keystone XL pipeline looks no closer to being built than it did back then.

Through bad luck, bad timing, bad management and bad manners, a lot of key items on the Conservative to-do list have not got done, and the government heads off the pitch with more own goals and red cards than points.

The Tories did manage to get a new election act passed, but nobody but Conservative MPs and staffers has ever said anything good about it, and even before it received royal assent, a court challenge was launched.

It’s anybody’s guess what judges will decide about whether ID requirements are a reasonable limit on the Charter right to vote, but the government has had quite a losing streak in court, a delayed reaction to populist law-making practices.

The government compounded its legal troubles when senior Tories foolishly griped about one of those decisions — the ruling that blocked the nomination of federal court judge Marc Nadon to one of the spots on the supreme court reserved for Quebec judges.

http://o.canada.com/news/conservatives-leave-the-pitch-with-more-red-cards-and-own-goals-than-points

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