SunTV has been caught staging a fake
citizenship oath-retaking ceremony using mostly bureaucrats from Citizenship
and Immigration as their oath-takers. Seriously. Because they’re totally not
the official media arm of The Party. For his part, Kenney said it was “poorly
handled,” and then sent a departmental comms staffer to SunTV to apologise.
Because apparently ministerial accountability is dead.
Now, this all having been said, one has to
wonder just why the bureaucrats went along with this in the first place –
though, to be fair, they did try to get SunTV to simply film one of 13 other
ceremonies, but no. The bureaucrats could have held firm, instead
of bending over backwards to accommodate the official media arm of The Party,
but they did anyway, and when it blew up, they took the blame. But I look at
these bureaucrats who are working under ministerial direction to help SunTV,
and yesterday’s story about the senior managers at Statistics Canada quashing
internal dissent, and I am taken back to the very same point I made yesterday –
have these civil servants forgotten that they swore their oath to the Queen.
They serve the Crown, and not the government of the day. It is their job to provide
impartial advice – not to try and make the minister and Prime Minister look
good. And this goes back to the issue of our lack of civic literacy – people confuse
and conflate the bureaucrats and civil servants with elected officials all the
time, because they don’t understand the separation of roles. It seems that some
civil servants need to have that reminder too.
After a trip to Heritage committee
yesterday, the anti-flag-ban bill has had its draconian penalty clauses
threatening jail time struck, and it’s now a bill that will simply “encourage” people
to fly the flag more according to its proper protocol. Seriously. But at least
the moronic bill has been declawed, right? Baby steps.
Despite having apologised for his rope
comments, Senator Pierre-Hugues Boivenue is now saying that he’s getting great
response to said suggestions that prisoners be given the option of suicide. So
is he unapologising?
Over at the NDP leadership race, it looks
like Brian Topp is attracting some hefty donations from Bay Street lawyers.
Meanwhile, some of the polite sheen looks to be coming off as Topp’s campaign
workers were trying to convince Saganash supports that Saganash can’t speak
good enough French to be leader – despite Saganash being from Northern Quebec
and quadrilingual. Nastiness ensues.
And Conservative Senator Nancy Greene Raine
wants the integrity of Canadian maple syrup protected from knock-offs, in case
you were concerned about them.
