SCANDAL TO THE MAX

I tried to resist the urge to plunge one more dagger into Maxime Bernier, but in the end he made too inviting a target.

The former Minster of Foreign Affairs resigned this week after it was revealed he had left sensitive documents at his former girlfriend’s apartment for 5 weeks. This is about the amount of time since the whole Julie “Biker Babe” Couillard scandal began.

5 weeks and not even a “booty call” to go back and retrieve sensitive documents?

Bernier must have been desperate to avoid Mlle. Couillard and was just too dumb to remember where he left classified government documents.

I am not sure if this is worse for Bernier (whose future political prospects are lower than his former sweetheart’s neckline) or for Stephen Harper for his lack of judgment. Lack of wisdom for not only appointing Mad Max to a position he was clearly unfit for and the Harper Gang’s unwavering support for Bernier and constant denial of events that turned out, in the end, to be all to true.

Now that the truth has been revealed (at least partially) the Cons are telling whoever will listen that the deal is done and it’s time to move on.

Well, good luck with that.

The Opposition, which oversaw the death of a thousand cuts that Bernier endured, is not about to let this one slip away. And they have help. The Conservatives themselves are being the unwitting accomplices to their own failure to make this scandal “go gently into that good night”. Their modus operandi of continual stonewalling throughout the previous month of the Bernier Affair has been changed to embarrassing obstruction by telling the House of Commons they have everything under control and that Foreign Affairs will be performing an internal review.

In other words, like NAFTA-gate, we will investigate ourselves and don’t fall off your chair when you find out we did nothing wrong.

Case closed.

In the end, Maxime Bernier may not been headed to “political purgatory” on his own. It looks like Helena Guergis, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, is also about to be shuffled out of her minor cabinet portfolio for her bungling of the Brenda Martin Case (Plus there was the Afghan Detainee mess, where she got caught not ding her homework, and her potential pipelining information to the Taliban of the whereabouts of Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff during their trip to Afghanistan).

The Parliamentary Paris Hilton and the Commons answer to Sam Malone will give the Cons the best looking back bench in recent Commons history