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The Income Trust Scandal: The Bizarro World of Ralph Goodale
Wednesday, December 28, 2005 at 10:18 PM
Leader
Ralph Goodale is meeting all the expectations we have for a minister of the Crown, at least for an honourable member of the Liberal Party, who all seem to inhabit some kind of Bizarro world:
Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said Wednesday night in an interview on CBC's The National that he is not going to bow to political pressure and step aside while the RCMP conducts a criminal investigation into a possible leak of information from his department.
"The RCMP said in their statement of this afternoon that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on my part- or on the part of anyone else for that matter," Goodale said in an interview with the CBC's chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge.
So the RCMP has passed the stage of a review and into a formal investigation without any evidence?!
Oh, tell me another one!
So how does the Honourable Ralph Goodale justify remaining the finance minister?
"It is not by any means proven and I know I've examined my own conduct in this matter and I'm confident that conduct is consistent with 30 years of integrity and trust in public life."
I guess he figures he's entitled to the job. None of that nonsense of public trust.
But wait. He's staying on, even as Mounties are sniffing around his office, to help ease fears:
"Quite frankly if I were to resign under those circumstances I believe I would only feed allegations that are out there in the context of a very political situation."
Oh yeah, I do feel better. Don't you? If he resigned, I would get all hot and bothered. But now that he's staying put, I feel the urge to examine the allegations draining away.
But before the comforting thought of Ralph Goodale remaining as finance minister overwhelms me and causes me to blog about ferns, let's recap what we've learned:
- The RCMP is investigating, but without even a shred of evidence.
- Evidence, or the lack thereof, notwithstanding, Ralph Goodale will remain on the job because he has it on excellent authority that he has done nothing wrong. That authority being Ralph Goodale, of course.
- Having the old finance minister whose department is under investigation for leaking information to traders is better than having a new finance minister not under investigation. Who says so? The old finance minister.
Make sense? Maybe in Bizarro World, but I don't think Canada is that far gone yet. At least I hope not.
You gotta wonder who in the Liberal Party brain trust thought this load on nonsense would keep things under control.
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Angry in the Great White North by Steve Janke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at stevejanke.com.