Harper loses Moore, but can’t shake Meredith
Even a finding of wrongdoing will not lift the burden saddled on taxpayers
The last week of the parliamentary session that began in 2011 included two departures that bode ill for the re-election prospects of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The first was the departure from the Conservative caucus of Senator Don Meredith, which was announced in a one-line email from the PMO at 9:51 p.m. on Wednesday: “Senator Meredith is no longer a member of the caucus.”
The email followed a report in the Toronto Star about a twoyear sexual relationship between a now 18-year-old girl and Meredith, a Pentecostal Toronto pastor.
The story must have given Harper’s people a splitting headache. Here’s another one of his Senate appointees making headlines for the worst of reasons, in the battleground where the next election will be decided: the GTA.
The Meredith story overshadowed Harper’s crucial $2.6-billion Toronto transit funding announcement on Thursday.
On one level, it is not fair to blame Harper for the Meredith scandal. Harper surely didn’t learn of her existence before the Star did. But Harper did appoint Meredith to the Senate, as he appointed Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau.
When a prime minister appoints a senator, he is giving that person a constitutionally protected role in our political life. There is no easy way to ever get rid of them.
Conservative leadership in the Senate announced the Senate ethics commissioner will look into Meredith’s private life, but even a finding of wrongdoing will not automatically separate him from the paycheques he will receive from us for the next 25 years.
Harper appointed Meredith in 2010, seemingly his reward for carrying the party’s banner in the no-hope 2008 Toronto Centre byelection that brought Bob Rae back to the House. Meredith got the chance to run after the party dumped Mark Warner, a high-profile lawyer who, like Meredith, originally comes from the West Indies. Harper’s boys dumped Warner after he showed unacceptable signs of red Toryism, highlighting housing and health issues that the party didn’t want to talk about.
Harper’s guys chose loyalty over character, it looks like, picking someone who would ineffectually parrot talking points rather than be a serious candidate trying to run a campaign better suited to downtown Toronto.
The person who delivered the news to Warner was party president Don Plett, whom Harper appointed in 2009 to the Senate, where he joined fundraiser-in-chief Irving Gerstein and campaign manager Doug Finley.
Harper had promised to reform the Senate, but instead he appointed 59 senators — all kinds of bagmen and organizers — and sent them around the country to sing his praises on our dime, turning it into an extension of the party headquarters, abusing the institution with greater zeal than even his Liberal or Progressive Conservative predecessors.
Twice, for example, he reappointed senators who had resigned their Senate seats to run for him, showing a cynical disregard for the public will that would have embarrassed even Jean Chrétien or Brian Mulroney.
The second departure that was bad news for Harper was that of widely liked Industry Minister James Moore, an intelligent, bilingual moderate from an at-risk Vancouver riding, the last person Harper can afford to lose.
Moore follows John Baird, Shelly Glover, James Rajotte, Peter MacKay and Christian Paradis in an exodus of recognizable spokespeople, while the party has failed to recruit high-profile candidates.
Harper is losing his best crew members but he can’t shake the worst ones, who are hanging around his neck like so many rotting albatrosses.