Raise a Glass to Jim Prentice

The much-liked Conservative cabinet member is leaving politics, but rumours persist he'll return to replace Stephen Harper.

What’s a politician in this country have to do to get the media to say nice things about him? Resign, apparently. Today the praise flows forth for Environment Minister Jim Prentice, who announced yesterday he’s leaving cabinet to take a lucrative post at CIBC and, presumably, add another storey onto his house.

“In an era that is hyper-partisan and anti-politician, the comportment and public service of Jim Prentice … merit special appreciation,” declares the always-stately Globe and Mail editorial board. Throughout his career, he always abhorred partisanship, and “Canadian democracy is better for his contribution.”

Not only did he contribute to Canadian democracy, but to Canadians’ ability to send texts to each other at low, low prices. “If your cell phone bill is coming down, it’s because (as) Industry Minister Prentice sold off a swath of air spectrum space for $5-billion to create the cut-throat competition that’s just now coming on stream,” writes the National Post’s Don Martin. An expert on government-Indian relations, he also engineered the residential school apology, “which remains the parliamentary goosebump moment of the decade.”

Though it was Prentice who stepped aside in 2002 so that Stephen Harper, then the freshly appointed leader of the new Conservative party, could win an easy by-election and take a seat in Parliament, many have taken Prentice’s relegation to the difficult environment portfolio as a sign the prime minister was trying to sideline a potential rival. “Mr. Prentice has grander ambitions and they were being thwarted in an environment portfolio, where the lights were forever at amber,” write the Post’s John Ivison. “(H)e was given Mission Impossible – reduce emissions without hurting the energy industry.”

That has fueled speculation that, despite his assertions to the contrary, we haven’t seen the last of Prentice. “As a formerly active federal Liberal, I can tell you that Prentice was always the Conservative who made Grits nervous,” writes Sun Media’s resident Liberal Warren Kinsella. “Harper has shown he is singularly incapable of capturing a parliamentary majority … Prentice, however, has the style and sensibility that could easily attract a lot of soft Liberal votes.”