At least as far as Big Daddy is concerned. And he is shocked, just shocked, that the Opposition would behave like "gossipy old busybodies". Except — ooopsie — it would appear that some people with a better grasp on national security have a vastly different opinion.
Some security experts are taking issue with the Conservative government's characterization of the Maxime Bernier affair as a private matter, saying questionable personal links could leave the minister - and Canadian interests - vulnerable.
Security experts? What do they know about security ... and stuff? Big Daddy has spoken.
The Conservatives repeatedly brushed aside opposition cries that Bernier had placed national security at risk by allowing a woman with apparently unsavoury ties to enter his orbit. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Bernier and other top Tories insisted it's nobody's business.
But Chris Mathers, a security consultant who spent years as an undercover RCMP officer, said Bernier's close associates must be closely scrutinized. "It's a security issue, for sure. . . It's not a private thing when you associate with someone who has criminal associates, and you're a person in authority.
"The reason that's bad is that there could be some type of extortion of the woman, of the minister himself - there's all sorts of potential things that could happen." Mathers says ties to the murky domain of organized crime, however tenuous, could prove problematic: "It's a world where rumour and innuendo rule."
After all, it’s not like this is the first time the KKKonservatives have had this kind of problem. One would think they'd learn from their mistakes.
Wesley Wark, a University of Toronto historian and expert in security and intelligence, also rejected the government line. "It's a serious matter because cabinet ministers are privy to the most sensitive information available to the government of Canada," he said.
"And we expect them to be very responsible in terms of, first of all, how they handle that kind of information. They're in the same kind of position any senior official with access to highly classified material would be." Wark pointed out that romantic entanglements with security implications - most notably the Gerda Munsinger affair - have previously ensnared Canadian politicians.
Conservative Pierre Sevigny, one of John Diefenbaker's ministers, resigned from cabinet in 1963 following an affair with Munsinger, a prostitute and Soviet spy. In 1985, Tory defence minister Robert Coates stepped down after word of his visit to a strip bar in West Germany.
I hate to call hypocrite — okay, I sooooooooo don't — but what do you think Big Daddy and his merry band of in-and-out fuckwits would do if this were a Liberal cabinet minister? Hmmmmmmmm? I think we're done here.
5 comments:
You know, it might be a fun excercise to take the CPC cohort of MPs and draw a family tree of sorts between them and various dodgy individuals and organisations...
but what do you think Big Daddy and his merry band of in-and-out fuckwits would do if this were a Liberal cabinet minister?
We don't have to look quite so far back to answer that one.
Not exactly the same thing (or maybe not given the accompanying innuendo?), but in a similar vein.
Note the location(s) of the first few results.
Hate to throw those monkey wrenches, but don't you need a NATO security clearance to serve as Foreign Affairs Minister of a NATO member?
Don't think you qualify for a NATO Top Secret if you have ties to organized crime.
Specially if you're involved in Afghanistan where the leading cash crop is opium.
But that's just me.
CSIS does security clearances. I suspect they will soon join the growing list of our institutions that are under attack by these thugs (the CPC, not the Hells I mean).
The CPC continue to sneer, cheer and jeer instead of answering the very simple questions of whether there was in fact a security check done, and what were the findings.
Stephane Dion - statesman.
Stephen Harper - henchman.
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