Pierre And Bruno

Never let it be said that this blog engages in impolite speculation about the sexual preferences of public figures.

Absolutely not. No way. Never.

The fact that Pierre Pettigrew has taken his chauffeur on several trips to exotic locations overseas where he has not driven him around on official business will not be a matter for petty gossip and innuendo.

Not here.

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 37: Communication Breakdown

Just as I was about to post my daily CBC Lockout watch report for day 37 of the neverending story last night, my modem locked me out of the internet.

"Oh no!" I exclaimed. "Dissonance And Disrespect is an essential part of the Canadian conservative identity! How will we be able to tell our stories to each other without it? We'll be forced to get our commentary from the CBC and Globe and Mail! Without the informed analysis and commentary from a Canadian perspective that only D&D can provide, we'll all become Liberals!"

Then I pulled myself together and realized that in my absence, Canadian right-wingers could turn to other blogs. They could even do their own blogging. And if they didn't need a taxpayer-funded network to tell their stories and form their opinions, would they really miss my blog if it was gone?

Fortunately for the CBCphobic-Canadian community, my internet service provider is much more responsive to my needs than the CBC has ever been. Which is why I can now post this update, a day late and a dollar short, instead of boring audiences to death with reruns of past posts and British BBC-bashing bloggers.

The Toronto Star's boundless patience with the CBC has worn thin, and it's calling Robert Rabinovitch and the Canadian Media Guild both to account:

If the current dispute lingers on much longer, the CBC faces the real possibility of alienating loyal viewers and listeners and giving vocal critics more ammunition to slash its annual grant from the federal government. If that happens, the CBC could be drastically changed in the coming years and its role as one of the key champions of Canadian culture threatened.

....

What Rabinovitch needs to do is outline why the CBC is taking this huge gamble with its future, with the potential permanent loss of viewers and thus advertisers. What's the risk? What's the payoff? Why were workers locked out? What can he tell taxpayers about how winning this dispute will result in a better, more efficient CBC in the years ahead?

Union leaders, too, need to explain why they feel so threatened, when many people at the CBC are already contract workers.

Management has been on the losing side of the PR war, for reasons perhaps not entirely its fault. It does have a network to run with a skeleton staff of managers, while the locked-out journalists have all the time in the world to blog, podcast, and go on bus tours with their complaints about the big bad CBC.

Strategic and crisis communications planners failed to foresee just how the blogosphere and podcasting have changed the playing field. The old media battle of duelling spokesmen just doesn't cut it anymore, not when every union member can be his own spokesman. If management has been caught unaware about how to counter the CBC bloggers' message, so too has the union. If picket line solidarity starts to crumble, union spokesmen won't be able to keep up a good front. Their own members will undercut them in their blogs just as they have undercut management's feeble response.

CBC senior management would like to deny scurrilous rumours about its bargaining team being unable to go the washroom without seeking its permission first. Management can be as big a bunch of piss takers as the union.

They've paid an arm and a leg and sold their souls, so now the CBCers are also giving their blood for the cause.

Dr. Hamid Riaz believes that depriving him of the CBC is depriving him of his rights as a citizen. The courts have turned the Charter of Rights and Freedoms into a cornucopia of rights that have evolved from mere wants. If they can find a right for two men to call themselves married, they can find a right to uninterrupted CBC programming somewhere in it.

Lorne Gunter ,on the other hand, doesn't believe his rights have been violated by the CBC lockout:

Well, now that you've asked, no, frankly, I don't miss you. I don't miss the bias in favour of big government, and Liberal government in particular, that permeates every news and public affairs show. I don't miss the self-delusional belief that our "state" broadcaster is somehow a "public" broadcaster, since I am a member of the public and the CBC doesn't represent me. And I don't miss the arrogant notion that the CBC is where Canadians tell their stories to one another or that the network has some special place in our national debates.

Everything the CBC does could be done as well by other television and radio services. Everything the CBC does is being done now by other television and radio services, except hockey. And if the CBC didn't exist, private television services would quickly pick up the hockey slack, too. In fact, a private broadcaster would likely pick up most of the CBC's on- and off-air hockey staff, and fans wouldn't be any the wiser.

Amen, Lorne. Amen.

Profiles In Sentencing

David Radler gets 29 months in jail, a $250,000 fine as part of a plea bargain for defrauding Hollinger.

Paul Coffin gets two years house arrest and a speaking tour on business ethics for defrauding the taxpayers of Canada.

Which country takes corporate greed and fraud more seriously?

Real Canadian Fighting Men

Canada's elite Joint Task Force 2 has been ridding the world of Taliban and Al-Qaeda scum without hesitation or apology:

OTTAWA -- Canadian special forces troops have killed and captured Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan, the head of defence operations acknowledged in an unprecedented look at his secretive commando unit.

Brig.-Gen. Mike Ward wouldn't confirm numbers, but he told a media briefing Tuesday that Joint Task Force 2 has been involved in multiple operations with U.S. and other coalition forces throughout Afghanistan.

Prisoners have been taken, questioned and turned over to U.S. or Afghan authorities with assurances they will be treated humanely and in accordance with elements of the Geneva Conventions, Ward said.

JTF2 is involved in ''important and dangerous missions,'' Ward said, adding no Canadians have been kille ''If we are going to keep the (enemy) at arms' length from these Afghani officials and protect them from murder and assassination ... we have to engage in combat operations that take the offensive into the mountains, into the remote regions where they have their bases and their sanctuaries and keep them off-guard.''

No nonsense about Canada's mythical 100-year tradition of peacekeeping here! JTF2 is not only trained to fight, but it's a damn sight better at it than anyone else in Canada.

If the Forces want to recruit the right sort of men, they need to present them more stories like this. The type who sign up just for the college money or who believe the stories about being social workers with rifles won't make a fighting force fit to stand alongside our enemies and to put the fear of Allah in our enemies.

The men of JTF2 will take their place in Canadian military history alongside the men who fought at Vimy, Juno Beach and Kapyong.

And the jihadis will tremble when they hear their name.

Source: National Post

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 36

The CBC board of directors will gather at an undisclosed location in Montreal, presumably to plot their next moves in the lockout. This will be the baptism of fire for the new chairman, Guy Fournier. How he handles this meeting may well determine whether the lockout ends this week or in March.

CMG wants to appear before the board, citing concerns that management has been blocking the board from speaking to the unions. Management can do that here, because Robert Rabinovitch isn't really answerable to the board, but to Parliament (in reality, to PMO). This should change, for the board's sake, and for the CBC's.

In lieu of the CMG, however, they may wish to send Pedro the Locked Out Gnome. He's plastic, inert, and impervious to criticism; a perfect representative of the CMG!

Matt Watts thinks that if the CBC and CMG replaced their male negotiators with women, the lockout would end quickly.

My own experience with women managers and bosses indicates would suggest otherwise. Arguing with them or seeking agreement on contentious issues is like herding cats.

They're the worst for sticking the knife in, too; the last woman boss I had was all smiles and compliments right up to the day she fired me.

Parliament reconvenes on September 26. Michaelle Jean becomes governor general the next day. CBC will not be there to cover either event. Nor the opening of the new NHL season. Nor any other magical date by which everyone hopes the CBC will end the lockout. Numerology and astrology will not bring an end to the lockout (though they might be behind both sides' strategy).

Cliff Chadderton's CBC Boycott

I have received a complaint from an informed source that I have been remiss in covering War Amps head Cliff Chadderton's boycott of the CBC for the duration of the lockout.

So here's a report on it.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled biased commentary, which is already in progress.

Changing Places Update

Two months ago, a British Columbia hockey mum sought to give her daughter the right to be leered at, maybe even groped, by her horny teenage teammates in the locker room. She has succeeded:

After a series of meetings with a human rights mediator this summer, Jane Emlyn of Lumby, in the Okanagan Valley, feels "a little vindicated" by B.C. Hockey's new coed dressing-room policy.

"It was just a matter of time," Emlyn said. "There are too many girls playing hockey -- it was inevitable."

Emlyn lodged a complaint because she felt her 14-year-old daughter Jewel's rights were violated when girls were barred from using the same changing rooms as the rest of their minor league hockey teams.

....

Under the B.C. policy, boys on integrated teams must have a minimum of shorts on, and girls shorts and a T-shirt, while in a coed dressing room.

When boys' and girls' dressing rooms are available, they will be used to change separately. When separate facilities don't exist, players will undress in shifts, and the minority gender gets first dibs on the showers before the rest of the team gets their turn.

This policy will break down ten seconds after the coach pops out of the locker room. Some girl is going to be sexually harassed or assaulted by a teammate, and then the whole matter of mixed-sex changing rooms will be back before the Human Rights Commission.

The same people who demanded the practice in the first place will be the first ones to demand a stop to it, on exactly the same grounds of "humiliation" and "exclusion".

Source: Edmonton Journal

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 35

Agreement has been reached on two more issues: general salary provisions and on-call work. Contracting out still remains unsettled; therefore, don't expect a settlement anytime soon, and expect me to keep doing these tiresome but necessary daily updates.

Rumour has it that the Auditor General will be investigating the CBC's finances and management. Let's hope that Sheila Fraser and company do as thorough a job as they did with the sponsorship program.

If you're unable or unwilling to spare the time to watch a real live CBC picket line in person, watch the CBC Toronto lockout webcam.

Praise For Brian Mulroney

The Calgary Sun's Licia Corbella makes the case for Brian Mulroney being Canada's best post-war prime minister.

History will regard him more favourably than his contemporaries have, especially in comparison to the two men who came after him in the field of foreign policy.

Yes, he boasts in this book that he played a huge role in bringing down the racist apartheid regime in South Africa.

But that's a fact gratefully acknowledged by Nelson Mandela himself.

In contrast, Chretien was an international embarrassment -- cosying up and conferring credibility on murderous dictators like Suharto of Indonesia and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe as well as walking into major international gaffes anytime he strayed from carefully scripted speeches.

Mulroney could just pick up the phone and be patched right through to U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan or George Bush Sr.

In contrast, on Aug. 11, Paul Martin promised B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell that he would call President Bush to try to get back the $5 billion in tariffs the U.S. unfairly and illegally imposed on Canada's softwood lumber exporters.

Well, it's been almost 40 days since that promise was made and Martin still hasn't called the president about lumber.

Brian Mulroney led the Commonwealth and helped convince the United States to pressure South Africa to abolish apartheid through economic and political sanctions. He convinced George Bush to go through the United Nations to receive international support for the first Gulf War. And he never embarrassed the country on the world stage, either.

Jean Chretien, on the other hand, made people cringe whenever he opined on foreign policy. ("I don't know whether I'm in West, South, North or East Jerusalem right now?")

Paul Martin's choice of principal foreign policy advisors--a shady businessman with visions of a New Age one world government and a has-been rock star--are even more worrisome than Chretien's gaffes.

In retrospect, Brian Mulroney looks that much better. He wouldn't have waited three days to send a press release expressing condolences to hurricane victims in New Orleans because he feared a backlash from the knee-jerk anti-American element in his caucus.

And the softwood lumber dispute would never have come to the point of imperilling NAFTA; he'd have settled it with a few quick phone calls.

We would have stood with the rest of the Anglosphere in the war against Islamic terrorism and Iraq, not with the corrupt regimes of France and Germany, who hypocritically cried "No blood for oil" while protecting their cronies' Iraqi oil interests.

Brian Mulroney might have been full of blarney, but you never had to feel ashamed of being Canadian when he was leading the country.

PQ Snow Job

First there was the shrink who signed up his patients to vote for him.

Then there was the drunk driver.

Now there's the frontrunning homosexual cocaine-snorting cabinet minister.

Does leading a clean, sober and blameless life leave disqualify people from seeking the Parti Quebecois leadership?

Biased Broadcasting Corporation

Canadians who feared that the CBC lockout would deprive them of their daily dose of anti-American propaganda disguised as news will be relieved to know that BBC picked up the slack:

NEW YORK (AFP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair has complained privately to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch that the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina carried an anti-American bias, Murdoch said at a conference here.

Murdoch, chairman of the media conglomerate News Corporation, recounted a conversation with the British leader at a panel discussion late Friday hosted by former president Bill Clinton.

"Tony Blair -- perhaps I shouldn't repeat this conversation -- told me yesterday that he was in Delhi last week. And he turned on the BBC world service to see what was happening in New Orleans," Murdoch was quoted as saying in a transcript posted on the Clinton Global Initiative website.

"And he said it was just full of hate of America and gloating about our troubles. And that was his government. Well, his government-owned thing," he said of the publicly owned broadcaster.

The response from BBC Radio One listeners provides some especially colourful examples:

lindsey

Im so shocked at bush! He went and visited a few people to say food and water was on its way but why did he not bring food or water for them when he came! Is this not bush's job to see that its done? I thought America was a nation who looked after their own? Maybe Bush should take less vacations because he's obviously not getting all his work done! Also who cares if people are taking food and clothes from shop, if you and your family were in that situation you would.

....

Chris Oxley

Absolutely sickening. The U.S. can get supplies into Iraq in 24 hrs but it takes them over 5 days to get supplies to their own country! Obviously they have the resources, so why the difference in priority? Why is it that the majority of New Orleans citizens who survived the disaster are white and the majority of those who are dead are black? I believe it is further example of the U.S. governments set of priorities- as Kayne West pointed out: In America, the poor, black and marginalized are deemed less important.

....

del conboy

the worlds weather is getting worse year after year. fact. the longer bush takes to realise that america is one of the big reasons for this, through polution, the longer it will be before we can try to sort it out. i feel for the people affected by this tragedy but we have to take some responsibility for what we've done to the state of the planet.

Does the BBC suggest that the British have done any better if a major storm levelled an area about the size of the British Isles? Is aid supposed to be magically teleported in the blink of an eye the second a disaster strikes?

Are people complaining that the fascist warmongering dictator George W. Bush failed to act with the proper dispatch expected of fascist dictators? Why didn't the brutal bloodthirsty destroyer of the U.S. Constitution and civil liberties roll over constitutional restraints, overthrow the municipal and state governments, declare martial law and commandeer the nation's wealth to relieve and rebuild everyone right away?

Source: Yahoo

A Word To The Unwise Is Insufficient

While Peter C. Newman's tell-all book based on his secret tapes of Brian Mulroney will likely be a bestseller,Michael Coren dismisses most of the content as old news or trivial.

Even so, he hits the nail on the head about the book's underlying message:

What the book does reveal and even symbolize, however, is the incestuous relationship that exists in Canada between the media and the establishment. Mulroney trusted Newman because that is how the game works.

Too many journalists clamour for Orders of Canada and political appointments from a ruling class with which they should barely be on speaking terms. We saw this only recently when a journalist was made governor general by a PM clouded in allegations of backroom deals and incompetence.

When politicians come to see journalists not as a threat but as another wing of government, who can we trust to tell us what really goes on behind closed doors and how this country has effectively lost its democratic governance?

We all suffer for the fact that the MSM in Canada has become the propaganda arm of the Liberal Party. Stories that should be getting the widest coverage, such as fraud in the Technology Partnerships Fund, or CSL's involvement with the oil-for-food scandal, will never receive more than perfunctory, dismissive treatment.

Meanwhile, a letter from a few disgruntled Conservative Party members in Quebec and Stephen Harper's barbecue tour become fodder for front-page headlines and special reports.

Whether the MSM realizes it or not, it suffers as well for having joined forces with the Liberal Party. If the Liberal Party goes down, the MSM is going to go down with it. The next Conservative government will be filled with people whose hostility towards the media has been simmering for more than a decade, and it will boil over when they have the power to do something to the media.

The CBC knows that it will be on the chopping block when the Conservatives come to power.

The rest of the media doesn't have to fear the loss of funding the way the CBC does, but loss of access and patronage appointments will get the message across.

Picketers for Hire

Just a thought for those CBC types who find themselves getting bored with marching around on circles on the picket line: hire replacement picketers!

The shade from the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market sign is minimal around noon; still, six picketers squeeze their thermoses and Dasani bottles onto the dirt below, trying to keep their water cool. They're walking five-hour shifts on this corner at Stephanie Street and American Pacific Drive in Henderson—anti-Wal-Mart signs propped lazily on their shoulders, deep suntans on their faces and arms—with two 15-minute breaks to run across the street and use the washroom at a gas station.

Periodically one of them will sit down in a slightly larger slice of shade under a giant electricity pole in the intersection. Four lanes of traffic rush by, some drivers honk in support, more than once someone has yelled, "assholes!" but mostly, they're ignored.

They're not union members; they're temp workers employed through Allied Forces/Labor Express by the union—United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). They're making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it's 104 F, and they're protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.

Source: Las Vegas Weekly (via FreeRepublic )

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 34

Word on the street is that this weekend will be make or break for the CBC lockout negotiations. Either they'll be back to work soon or they'll be walking the picket line for months to come.

All the major issues remain unresolved, and CBC negotiators are warning the CMG to hurry up:

With 18 issues still remaining and nearly five weeks into the labour disruption, CBC is concerned with the current slow pace at the table, particularly on the key issues. Nearly all of the remaining issues are important ones, and the fundamental matters at the table - including Contract employees, Contracting Out, Demonstrated Occupational Qualification and Job Evaluation, among others - will require concentrated time in order to reach agreement. CBC is committed to bargaining and will do everything possible to try to reach a deal so we can all get back to work as soon as possible.

Toronto Unlocked, Andy Barrie's morning show on CIUT, will air its final show Friday because of the strain of doing a morning news show on CIUT's limited resources.

Give Barrie and his team credit for actually producing real programming instead of the usual whining about being locked out and inside jokes mixed in with a little music that form the content of all the other broadcasts by locked-out CBC people.

Ouimet puts down her Earl Grey and gives the management and union both barrels, but especially the union:

And you know they are in here: the unionized duds who can't work, don't want to work, or refuse to work. You know exactly who I mean. CMG knows exactly who they are, too.

But these people cannot be fired because it is the union's job to protect them. They get shuffled around for years. They get dumped into unwitting departments. They complain every day about work until they finally, mercifully, retire.

My father was an elementary school principal, and he used to complain regularly about how the teachers union made it impossible to get rid of the deadwood floating around the schools in his board. And if you think CMG is bad for this, Ouimet, you've never seen a teachers union go to the wall for the weakest.

Civitatensis has posted the first online petition in favour of prolonging the CBC lockout. You can sign it here.

Operation Good PR For Martin

The Canadian Navy ships sent to the Gulf Coast to assist with Hurricane Katrina relief operations are coming home after just four days:

The navy’s claim that ships were the best way to send help to the Gulf Coast isn’t holding water with some sailors.

At the bar after a long day of cleaning up trash left behind by Hurricane Katrina’s massive storm surge, some seem bitter that the military was already making plans to pull out again four days after our warships first anchored off Biloxi, Miss.

“It’s all about the PR,” said one sailor. “Stand in front of the camera and look nice.”

To many sailors, the humanitarian mission has obvious political overtones.

“It doesn’t matter to us,” said one naval officer. “We get paid to serve, so whatever the country wants us to do, we do.”

....

But the U.S. Navy — which was in charge of organizing the Canadian work parties — seemed ill-prepared to assign the Canadians major tasks.

“I get pretty pissed off when I don’t have something to do,” said one frustrated Canadian sailor. “Maybe they don’t trust us.”

It also seems, at times, that the Canadians are more worried about making sure their sailors use hand-sanitizer and eat a proper lunch, than actually getting down to the work of cleaning up hurricane damage. Toronto even bought 200 Camelbak water carriers — at $40 a pop — to keep its sailors hydrated, even though cases of bottled water are available everywhere they go.

Last weekend, the emergency preparedness people couldn't even be bothered to come in on the weekend to make sure the navy was properly supplied.

Now they're coming home early after having done little more than pick up some garbage, wasting valuable naval manpower and resources.

But at least Paul Martin no longer looks heartless for having waited three days to issue a press release expressing condolences for the victims, and he also looks somewhat resolute for having sent our men into harm's way.

Whether or not anyone was actually helped in Mississippi, Paul Martin was.

And that's what really counts in the end.

Source: Halifax Daily News

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 33 1/3

From The Globe and Mail:

CBC will not cover Michaelle Jean's installation as governor general on September 27, rather than face a confrontation over the picket line.

So the CBC will be denied the chance to broadcast a spectacle of fulsome praise for Mme. Jean and shameless self-congratulation for having proven once again that only the CBC can train and provide the right sort of people for the vice-regal office.

Michael Moore is upset that CBC is airing his incendiary documentary, Bowling for Columbine, on Sunday night during the lockout:

"I do not want my film being broadcast on the network unless it is willing to let its own workers back in to work and promises to bargain with them in good faith," Mr. Moore said in a statement Friday.

"CBC has locked out its union workers, an action that is abhorrent to all who believe in the rights of people to collectively bargain. Why the great and honourable CBC is behaving like an American corporation is beyond me."

That's going to hurt. If there's anything the CBC prides itself on being, it is being the antithesis of all things American, for good or for ill. They weren't there to lead the anti-American media parade during Hurricane Katrina, and having one of the CBC's biggest heroes whack them publicly just adds salt to the wound.

Pensioners And Refugees

Just received this e-mail from a friend:

Federal Government - Canadian Government Policy
It is interesting that the federal government provides a single refugee
with a monthly allowance of $1,890.00 and each can get an additional
$580.00 in social assistance for a total of $2,470.00.

This compares very well to a single pensioner who, after contributing to
the growth and development of Canada for 40 or 50 years, can only
receive a monthly maximum of $1,012.00 in old age pension and Guaranteed
Income Supplement.

Maybe our pensioners should apply as refugees.

Let's send this thought to as many Canadians as we can and maybe we can
get the refugees cut back to $1,012.00 and the pensioners up to
$2,470.00, so they can enjoy the money they were forced to submit to the
Canadian government for those 40 to 50 years.

Please forward this to every Canadian you know to expose how our elected
politicians are spending our money.

Just another story you'll never see the MSM cover in this country.

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 33

Locked-out CBC employees in St. John's have forced the cancellation of part of CBC's coverage of the 25th anniversary of Terry's Fox Marathon of Hope, rather than force young children to cross a picket line to get to their road race. Coverage of the CMG's Marathon of Despair continues as usual.

Civitatensis reports that CBC employees weren't planning to picket Michaelle Jean's installation as governor general on September 27 until she invited them to!

Jean’s statement and leak to the media are essentially a cue for the union to picket the ceremony. She likely hopes to advance her friends’ position by trying to embarrass the CBC brass. Jean has not yet assumed office, and she is already playing politics with the vice-regal position, which by tradition remains outside partisan issues.

Jean’s staff are not confirming or denying anything, which is a calculated way to feed the media’s attention and keep their eye fixed on the question.

Once a CBCer, always a CBCer. Madame Jean is not about to let such trivial matters as constitutional conventions and dignity of the office get in the way of helping out her former colleagues.

Interesting point: Four of the last five governors general (Jeanne Sauve, Romeo LeBlanc, Adrienne Clarkson, and Michaelle Jean) worked for the CBC. The office now represents the Crown less than it does a Crown corporation. Let's drop the pretense and just let the CBC appoint future governors general, in recognition of the fact that both offices now represent the Trudeaupian ideology.

The Financial Post asks why the CBC's fans seem stuck in a 1970s time warp when it comes to the state's role in cultural protectionism.

The only possible rationale for subsidizing a thing is that it provides a benefit to the community at large above and beyond the private benefit to the person consuming it. If you have a flu shot, that may very well be good for me. Likewise if you get yourself off hard drugs and out of a life of crime. But if you watch Da Vinci's Inquest, what possible benefit is that to anyone but yourself?

Hockey Night in Canada will go ahead with its Saturday night doubleheaders regardless of the lockout, according to the Ottawa Sun. The first game is expected to be an announcerless game, like the CFL's announcerless games that have proven surprisingly popular; the other is expected to come from a U.S. production company. So much for the CMG's hubris about Hockey Night in Canada forcing management to cave!

Small Dead Animals has a report from a locked-out CBC worker who isn't marching lockstep with the union. At least one CBC manager is defying her employer on the blogosphere. Is there not at least one CBC employee who'd like to tell the CMG to shut up and get them back to work?

Cow Power

Researchers at Ohio State University have found a way to power batteries with the contents of a cow's stomach.

No bullshit!

Source: Ottawa Citizen

The Last Days Of Pierre Pompadour?

Rumours of a pre-election cabinet shuffle were circulating around Ottawa last week, and if the recent media campaign of controversy against Pierre Pettigrew is any indication, he's going to be shuffled out:

Ottawa — Pierre Pettigrew always seemed to walk away from political disaster without rumpling his suit or getting a hair out of place, airily asserting it was all overblown. Now, the harried Foreign Affairs Minister seems under siege.

Mr. Pettigrew's stock in cabinet, and with the Prime Minister's Office, has fallen steeply in the past 18 months over failures on policy initiatives and in staying on message.

In recent reports, unnamed foreign-service officials say he spends too much time at the Paris apartment he has owned for 20 years. The Globe and Mail reported this week on documents that show he took his chauffeur with him to Paris, Madrid and Lima, where no driver was needed, at a cost of $10,000.

All that has been accompanied by a less visible burst of rumours, stories and allegations -- some substantiated and some not -- circulating in Ottawa as a variety of critics apparently feel the time is ripe to target Mr. Pettigrew.

"There's blood in the water," a senior Liberal conceded to The Globe and Mail this week.

The recent stories about Pierre Pettigrew give him the appearance of an effete dilletante more interested in the luxuries of life and his position than the responsibilities of office. Foreign relations, especially with the United States, have been deteriorating on his watch. He's been virtually invisible on the softwood lumber issue while he swans about on the Left Bank.

One can almost hear the snickering insinuations about his relationship with his chauffeur, the same sorts of insinuations that eventually brought an end to George Radwanski's business trips and gourmet lunches with his secretary on the taxpayer's dime.

Pierre Pettigrew's gracefully styled hair will not be gracing the Cabinet table much longer. Bet on it.

Source: Globe and Mail