OK, it is taken for granted that Ralph Goodale is not universally loved
on the Prairies, not everyone’s cup of tea.
There’s that little issue about a compulsory Canadian Wheat Board.
Then there’s his Liberal partisanship and, well, the fact that he keeps
getting elected in the midst of Canadian Alliance and New Democratic
Party country despite the best efforts of the National Citizens’
Coalition (Stephen Harper’s former home team) to dislodge him.
But surely this week, even his most harsh critics could be called upon
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to offer Goodale a little sympathy and charity, perhaps even a symbolic
black ribbon show of support for a day or two.
The three-term Regina MP (four if you count one term in the 1970s as an
Assiniboia MP) has been handed the political job from hell – minister
in charge of the federal department of public works.
Those who remember the childhood fable about the tar baby will have a
small inkling of what he faces.
If history is a guide, everything the responsible minister touches in
the department sticks and ensnares.
It is the place where prime ministers send political elephants to die.
How is Goodale a political elephant?
Well, in political terms he has had a very long life as a Liberal
defying the political winds in Saskatchewan.
He has been likened to a member of a prairie endangered species herd.
He has political tusks that have served him well in the corners and the
tight spots of political life.
And as a student of politics, a detail man and a survivor, he has the
memory of, well, an elephant.
He has also had a long political history unsoiled by scandal or
allegations of personal impropriety.
All of which makes this Paul Martin supporter a natural candidate to
try to fix one of prime minister Jean Chrétien’s biggest problems.
Public works is a political cesspool.
It has a history of being a funnel whose primary job is to connect
taxpayer dollars with the hands of faithful party supporters.
In recent history, it was the case with the Mulroney Conservatives when
Quebec Tory ward-healer Roch LaSalle was the minister.
It was the same with Nova Scotia Liberal David Dingwall in the early
Chrétien years and later Montreal MP and political fixer Alphonso
Gagliano, now elevating Danish public life as Canada’s ambassador.
The latest victim of the department was Don Boudria, caught renting a
chalet from a big Liberal donor and contract beneficiary and shuffled
by Chrétien May 26 out of the political limelight.
All of which ushers in Goodale, vowing to be a straight arrow, to root
out corruption and to make the contract-granting public works
department an oasis of transparency and good governance.
It brings to mind one of the rules of thumb of former bureaucratic
heavyweight Arthur Kroeger: cabinet ministers are temporary custodians
of permanent problems.
So wish Goodale well as he tries to manage the unmanageable and clean
up the permanently soiled.
And for those who see him as the CWB anti-Christ, there is a good side
to this story.
He will have less time to promote single-desk wheat marketing as he
tries to figure out where the next public works explosion is going to
go off.
