Hiding Liberal Skeletons (en francais)

I had to check three times, while reading this article, to actually confirm that it was the Toronto Star

Hiding Liberal skeletons

JAMES TRAVERS

One of the great political myths is that patronage is a victimless crime. Politicians push jobs and contracts to friends, the nation's work gets done and ordinary folks get mad but no one really gets hurt. Once upon a simpler time, that might have been true.

While railroad, hydro and even spy scandals rocked and sometimes ruined governments, a rich, relatively honest and passably well-managed country shrugged off its leaders' worst indiscretions to somehow stumble forward.

But those times aren't these times. Blame it on high-profile public policy failures, the cumulative effect of corruption, or public frustration reaching the tipping point, but patronage now stands exposed as a villain surrounded by victims. It's not just a Canadian phenomenon. In the U.S., a presidential pal who knew more about horses than saving lives is appointed to the federal emergency agency and the result is the New Orleans rescue debacle and a Bush administration suddenly in free-fall.

Up here, where even our embarrassments are 90 per cent smaller than those down there, we have David Dingwall. Who could have guessed that Jean Chrétien's stranger-than-fiction decision to hand the machine that literally prints money to a Liberal synonymous with pork-barrel politics would provide such startling insight.

In defending the indefensible Dingwall, Paul Martin's government is proving that it fears a former Liberal cabinet minister more than Justice John Gomery or even angry voters.

What else explains the indecent hurry to send Dingwall on his way with even more taxpayer money, this time gift-wrapped as severance?

Doesn't it just make you wonder what they're afraid Dingwall would say?

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