Unreal

In case anybody thought the Cons would learn anything about trying to keep their claims of support at least vaguely plausible after Al Gore rightly shot down John Baird, there's little reason for optimism. Instead, the Cons took another step toward absurdity when Diane Finley went out of her way to cite the chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board chair who just resigned over the Cons' woeful management of Canada's refugee system:

Hon. Diane Finley (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, the fact that there are vacancies is just one more example of why we need to fix it. The Liberals could not recruit people.

I am not the only one who believes there is a problem. Let me read a quote. The current chair of the IRB, Mr. Fleury, has said, “the Board could be an even more effective, efficient and ultimately fair tribunal”. That is the current chair speaking and I agree with him.

Sadly, it doesn't seem likely that Fleury will be able to respond immediately as Gore did, since his resignation doesn't take effect until March 16.

But it hardly takes a direct correction from Fleury himself to see just how far Finley had to stretch to find something to defend the Cons' record. After all, the quote amounts to a politically-neutral and indeed relatively innocuous statement of fact - effectively "this board isn't perfect", which presumably applies to any person or entity in existence (other than perhaps the Cons in their own minds). And even to find that kind of quote, Finley apparently had to stoop to misrepresenting the view of somebody who clearly can't be taken to approve of the Cons' management.

Suffice it to say that if the Cons' answers based on publicly-available information are this far removed from reality, we can only wonder just how brazenly the Cons are misinforming Canadians when it comes to information which can't be contradicted on the public record.