Previous
Why does Oda stay?
Our good friend Stephen Harper turned 53 on Monday. That’s not a particularly ripe old age for a politician - Hurricane Hazel’s got him beat by more than three decades. But we’re beginning to think that Stephen’s showing signs of dementia. How else to explain why he keeps allowing our MP, Bev Oda, the Minister of International Cooperation, to embarrass him and his government? It’s hard to keep track of how many times she’s been beat up in Parliament over excess spending and other ethical misdemeanours. You’d think he’d be getting a little tired of it all; we certainly are.
As Harry Stemp points out on page 11, it’s a pity that Ms. Oda keeps doing this. In terms of working on behalf of her constituents, she’s a pretty exemplary MP. Despite Uxbridge being on the far borders of her huge constituency, many miles from her home office in Bowmanville, she’s been fairly conscientious over the years about attending important events and doing the research to make her speeches here, relevant and valuable. You’ve also got to believe that she’s skilled in her cabinet portfolio as well. Mr. Harper had the opportunity after the last election to demote her, or at least shuffle her off to a position less high-profile, less in the glare of the auditor’s spotlight. Instead, he kept her right where she was, indicating she must have been doing a few things right on the international front.
And speaking of her cabinet job, she probably gets to jet to a greater variety of international destinations than anyone in the government. Isn’t that enough? Does she need the classiest hotels and the fresh-squeezed gold-plated orange juice as well, not to mention the limos that she seems addicted to? If we were the PM, we’d be tempted to say in a fatherly fashion (except that Bev is 15 years older than Steve), “OK, look, Bev, you can go to Bermuda, we think that you should, but you’ve got $300 a day, tops, and that includes souvenirs.”
After the KAIROS incident, we suggested that Ms. Oda might want to lay low for a while, maybe not run in the next election, but at least retire temporarily to the back benches. As much as she enjoyed the spotlight during her long years in the media, politics are a different kettle of fish. Maybe she needs to step back and just advise from the sidelines for a while. Or maybe she needs her boss to make that decision for her.
Ms. Oda’s colleagues are telling us all to get off her back. She’s repaid the money, she’s apologized to the Canadian taxpayer, what more do we want? Well, we won’t pretend to speak for the national media, we’re just a little community newspaper in the backwoods of the minister’s home riding, but since you asked, we’ll tell you what we want. We want our pride in our MP back.
It’s amazing that Bev Oda, whose mother was interned in a labour camp during World War II, became the first Japanese Canadian to ever be elected to the House of Commons, and therefore obviously the first to ever serve in the cabinet of the federal government. She’s done a lot of good things as a cabinet minister, and a lot of good things in Durham as our MP. All in all, that’s quite a bit to proud of. But she’s not making us proud lately, quite the opposite. And, ultimately, we blame that on Steve.
July 14, 2011
