A Time Out for Tony

What could be more indefensible then sprinkling $50 million of pork around your riding? Refusing to say a single word about it, for one.

The ever-unfolding mess surrounding Tony Clement's $50-million G8 spending spree continues with aplomb this week, with the honourable member for Parry Sound-Muskoka refusing to answer a single question about the affair in Parliament. Eric Duhaime of the Sun chain says it's time for Clement, the Treasury Board, to either resign his cabinet position or for the prime minister to shuffle him out. “In short, Clement has repeatedly violated practically all standards of accountability and ethics,” says Duhaime, dragging up the Clement's census cock-up from last summer to paint a pattern of wanton ineptitude that's hardly becoming of the man entrusted to find billions in savings across the government. “What moral authority will Clement now have when he tells a colleague to cut a few million dollars in his department?” asks Duhaime. We don't suppose it's his colleagues that have any problem with his spending (heck, John Baird seems to have played role in doling out the G8 legacy fund), but there are a few million small-'c' conservatives across the country that surely do.

Kelly McParland of the National Post deadpans that all of Clement's recklessness makes him the perfect candidate to find hidden savings, as “it makes sense to pick a guy who knows all the best tricks” to “sneak spending past the government’s regulatory barriers.” Beyond that, though, the latest twist in the spending scandal – e-mails uncovered by the NDP that show Clement promised officials in his riding that a review of the G8 spending wouldn't get in the way of the projects – will surely help confirm that a guy who had previously been one of the more well liked minsters in Harper's cabinet (owing in no small part to his Twittering persona and willingness to take on the CRTC) has frittered away just about all that goodwill. “Mr. Clement may seem mild-mannered, but the reports on his various G20 scams suggest he’d be the guy in the prison camp who ended up with all the cigarettes, while everyone else was smoking butts,” says McParland. In a more draconian society, we might have been able to find out just how true that metaphor might be.

Finally, the Toronto Star's Chantal Hebert pours water on the notions that Tony Gazebo might be put out to pasture and that the Tories would be more open, honest, and responsive now that they have a majority government. “Since Parliament reopened, former industry minister Tony Clement has been asked more than 30 questions about his role in the dispensing of G8 summit-related largesse to his riding but has failed to provide a single answer,” notes Hebert. Such is life under “the new Conservative order,” where bills get fast-tracked through the House of Commons with as little debate as possible, cronies like Clement get promotions, and power creeps toward the executive and away from the halls of the legislature. We're witnessing the neutering of Parliament before our eyes, with next to nothing to stop it for the next four years.