Lose the election?

We'll just give you the job anyway.

A government employee described by Liberal Irwin Cotler as his “shadow MP” working on the federal payroll has offered some clues about his job and his publicly funded salary.
Mr. Cotler has raised concerns that Saulie Zajdel, the Conservative candidate he defeated in last year's election, is earning a government paycheque while trying to undermine him in his Montreal riding.

The significance of the riding of Mount Royal? Take a look and see if you can figure it out.

As an added feature, take a look at the yapping  Zajdel was doing a little while ago.

Saulie Zajdel, the former Côte des Neiges/NDG councillor and Conservative candidate, has been appointed by the federal government as a regional advisor for community outreach and relations.
“I’m going to be working under Christian Paradis, minister of the Montreal region, and Canadian Heritage minister James Moore in the Ministers Regional Office in Montreal,” Zajdel told The Suburban last week.

Christian Paradis ... well, isn't that just too special. 

Christian Paradis should be snooping the back benches for a place to sleep (Updated)

The Ethics Commissioner throws a marshmallow at a corrupt minister of the Crown. If you read this you get the overwhelming desire to hose down Mary Dawson for failure to perform. It took her two years!

So, you should read this instead. Impolitical cuts right to the chase and highlights the serial breaches committed by Paradis.

Update: No surprise here. Accountability and ministerial responsibility don't actually harmonize with the corrupt nature of the Harper crowd. 

Industry Minister Christian Paradis is refusing to resign after being found in violation of the Conflict of Interest Act for helping Rahim Jaffer secure a meeting with senior bureaucrats after his former caucus colleague’s arrest on driving and drug charges.

...

Mr. Paradis refused to step down, saying in a written statement he will take “further precautions” in his future dealings with people seeking government funding.

Illegitimate minister in a supposititious government. 

Minister of Asbestos aide resigns

An aide to Christian Paradis, Minister of Asbestos, resigned last night over his own meddling in at least four access-to-information requests, one of which involved :

"the backgrounds of members of a government panel examining asbestos."

Would that by any chance be the backgrounds of the members of this government panel? March 2010 :

The one remaining asbestos mine in Canada, second largest exporter of asbestos in the world, is in the riding of Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis.

At the last meeting of the Committee on Natural Resources, NDP Pat Martin moved to cut the $250,000 funding the department allocates to the [asbestos lobby group] Chrysotile Institute. No one supported the motion, and the other committee
members - I'm looking at you, Libs - slunk away so there was no longer the quorum necessary for the vote.

At the time I wondered why, as per the Sierra Club's allegations, the Natural Resources Ministry was paying the Chrysotile asbestos lobby group to lobby its own minister.

On March 23, 2010, the motion to remove the government subsidy to Chrysotile Asbestos Institute was defeated in committee nine to one :
Geoff Regan, Liberal - NO ............ Nathan Cullen, NDP - YES
Navdeep Bains, Liberal - NO ........ Cheryl Gallant, Con - NO
Alan Tonks, Liberal - NO ............. Richard Harris, Con - NO
Paule Brunelle, Bloc - NO ............ David Anderson, Con - NO
Mauril Bélanger, Liberal - NO ...... Bernard Genereux, Con - NO

and that made me wonder why they all caved on what appears to be an obvious conflict of interest at the very least.

In May, the minister's aide Sebastien Togneri was questioned by the Ethics Committee over his blocking of information. Shortly thereafter the Cons decided not to allow political staffers or their work/incriminating emails to appear before the committee any more and Paradis showed up in his aide's place.

As Pogge would say here - things that make you go hmmm ...
h/t Antonia Z.

"No one takes Ethics Committee summons seriously"

"At the end of the day, [Ethics Committee Chair]Paul Szabo and this kangaroo court have no credibility and no one takes their summons seriously."

So said Con MP Pierre Poilievre in August two years ago when he was only an associate member of the Ethics Committee.
Since becoming fully-fledged, and also Parliamentary Secretary to Steve, his job there is apparently to pipe up "Point of order" every few minutes like some demented Energizer bunny until the Chair finally cuts his mike.

Lib Wayne Easter's spirited response to John Baird's surprise appearance before the Ethics Committee on Tuesday in place of Dimitri Soudas has already been well covered. Soudas cancelled only minutes before the committee convened, in keeping with Steve's new rules forbidding ministerial staffers from appearing before committees.

Chair Paul Szabo at first let Baird speak, setting off an hour of angry opposition motions to dismiss the usurper, interspersed with Poilievre's points! of! order! By contrast, the Con committee members dutifully bent over their brand new talking points on "ministerial responsibility for their staffers", carefully read aloud with heads bowed down when it was their turn to speak.
Eventually Szabo broke a tie vote over whether or not to let Baird stay and booted him out.

Well sure. After all, as Minister of Transport, Baird is not Soudas' boss and would not be able to answer any of the questions the committee was intending to ask Soudas, despite Baird's sinister hand waving about something he called "collective responsibility".

And as Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac of the Bloc pointed out, the last time a minister appeared before the committee on behalf of one of their staffers - that would be Christian Paradis, Minister of Asbestos - his idea of "ministerial responsibility" was to just blame the staffer.

Carole Freeman of the Bloc brought up committees' right to subpoena witnesses :

"[Soudas] is an ordinary citizen and should be treated as such. A house leader does not have the power to change existing rules simply by standing up in the House and making a statement."

But then there was another tie vote that I haven't seen discussed.

What to do about the many named bureaucrats already scheduled to appear in the few weeks remaining before the committee last meets on June 22? And what to do if their ministers wanted to show up in their staffers' place?

Chair Szabo asked for a motion to give him authority to summon the witnesses already scheduled to appear ... if necessary ... even if it meant allowing those witnesses' ministers to come as substitutes in their stead.

A pretty weak motion but as he explained, they were waiting on an expected future ruling by the Speaker on such witness substitutions. And he was only asking for either the scheduled witness or his/her minister to appear if that's what was offered.

OK so it was an astoundingly weak motion to exercise parliamentary committees' right to summon witnesses, but you know what? That vote was tied up 5 to 5 - the Cons vs everyone else - and only passed because the Chair broke it by voting in favour.

Pierre Poilievre suggested what he called "a friendly amendment" to solve the impasse over the next scheduled witness :

"just replace the name of the political staffer in question with the name of the Minister."

Your moment of hideous irony : The work currently before the committee is looking into "allegations of systematic political interference by ministers' offices to block, delay, or obstruct the release of information to the public regarding the operation of government departments".