OTTAWA -- Accepting gifts, including free Ottawa Senators playoff tickets in luxury corporate boxes, continue to be acceptable for Conservative MPs in Stephen Harper's government, despite criticism of the practice when the Tories were in opposition.
So government whip Jay Hill watched a Senators game from a luxury box as a guest of Bell Canada. Not really a grievous sin, but it surprises me that the Tories would be up to this kind of thing so soon after gaining power as the Party of Accountability, Transparency, and so forth. Even more rich is the fact that Mr. Hill feels he is in the clear because ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro--who two months ago, according to these same Tories, didn't have the mental capacity to tie his own shoe-laces--gave the okay.
I appear to hold to the minority view in that I am quite unimpressed by the Tories political performance in the time since the election. It seems that every time they stand on the verge of a political honeymoon, they manage to shoot themselves in the foot (flag flap, dissing Ontario). And what I see in this behavior is a resemblance to Mulroney's first term gang. A party long out of power, and not used to holding its reigns, quickly gorges itself on a diet or petty thievery, low level corruption, and generally thuggish behavior.
In fact, I am betting that we are no more a few months away from our first real Tory scandal. Given history, I suspect it will involve a back-bencher discovered t-boning a hooker on Parliament Building lawn.
Hide the silver-ware, people, the Tories are BACK!
1 comment:
It's so reminiscent of when Uncle Preston said he'd refuse to live in Stornoway and have a driver take him around in a limo, until he got hisself elected and into that position.
But isn't it always different when it's you?
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