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The worst expense folly yet
It’s not that Bev Oda’s resignation as Minister of International Cooperation was at all unanticipated. The Prime Minister was expected to do a bit of shuffling of the cabinet cards this summer, and Mme. Oda, who has caused the government a bit of embarrassment with her free-spending ways, was expected to be shuffled off to Bowmanville.
In fact, when the good people of Durham, including several thousand Uxbridgers, resoundingly re-elected Bev in May of last year, few of them really expected her to land back in cabinet. But she did, and in the same portfolio with which she’d had a few problems. Perhaps, some said, she struck a bargain with Steve; she’d run again and win Durham for him, but only on condition that she was given a chance to redeem herself in the same job.
That argument is hard to swallow. Is Durham a vulnerable enough riding that Harper really needed Ms. Oda to run again? Isn’t it a sufficiently safe seat that any one could have won under the Tory banner? After all, Oda took 54% of the vote even under Layton-mania in a riding with a pretty heavy labour population. A Tory rookie might not have done as well, but surely he or she would still have emerged on top.
And yet... Ms. Oda did not just resign her cabinet post. Faced with the prospect of three years on the back benches, she resigned her seat as well, thus forcing a by-election that according to Elections Canada , will cost as much as a million dollars to stage (that seems pricey, but they should know). Kind of makes a $16 glass of orange juice pale by comparison, doesn’t it?
Bev Oda has given no reason for her resignation, either as Minister or as MP for Durham, and she’s refusing to give any interviews that might divulge the reason. In the absence of any statement, we are, of course, free to wildly speculate, and the most unfortunate conclusion, based on recent behaviour, is that she is addicted to the spotlight and the high life, and is not prepared to languish the next three years in comparative obscurity.
But Ms. Oda surely knows that she was not elected as a cabinet minister. No one is. Like every resident of the House of Commons, including the Prime Minister, she was elected first and foremost as a Member of Parliament. We hired her to do a job for us for four years, and now she’s breaking the contract after only a quarter of that time, and it’s going to cost us a million bucks to hire someone else to finish the job she was entrusted with. Among all the irresponsible things she’s done, this is far and away the worst. Especially when she won’t even tell us why.
As the cartoon on this page demonstrates, we don’t wish Bev Oda any ill will. On the whole, we believe she’s done a good job as our MP. We just wish she’d honoured our votes and continued as our MP for another three years. Perhaps if she had, she’d have lived down all the other stuff, and finished her term with her head held high.
As it is, her name for a long time will be synonymous with $16 orange juice and expensive limos and smoking in back alleys. It’s not fair to her, and it’s not fair to us. Let’s hope our next MP will fare better.
July 14, 2011
