On flawed judgment

Following up on yesterday's news that Con MP Christian Paradis' official agent Stephane Fortin has been charged with fraud, let's note how embarrassing it is that the MP who chose Fortin to run his campaign finances has since been handed a cabinet position which requires exactly the kind of attention to detail and judgment which was sorely lacking in Paradis' choice of agents.

In effect, at the time of the campaign, the only judgment which Paradis apparently had to exercise was to find a single individual to serve as his official agent. His choice was somebody who on the Cons' own terms was fired for gross incompetence, and who according to the charges now filed against him was already falsely representing himself to be a qualified lawyer within Paradis' father's firm. And it's in part because Paradis' campaign required blatant manipulation of its campaign books to make up for apparent overspending under Fortin that Conadscam now holds the potential to bring down dozens of Con MPs, candidates and agents from the 2006 election.

For most of us, that kind of track record of decision-making would demand some serious explanation before a person would be allowed to decide anything more important than whether to order soup or salad with a restaurant meal. But in the Cons' desperation to find somebody from Quebec to replace Maxime Bernier in cabinet, they instead decided to hand Paradis responsibility for a department which proudly proclaims that it handles more than $1.3 trillion in cash flow each year. And all this despite what one can only assume to be full knowledge of Fortin's failings in the election campaign, and at least some knowledge of his problems with at least Paradis' father's law firm even as he was trusted with campaign funds.

Needless to say, if a single decision of Paradis' in his ministerial role proves anywhere near as disastrous as his choice of official agents, the result could be catastrophic for Canada as a whole, not only the Cons as a government. And whether the Cons' choice to put Canada's public works in his hands was based more on a genuine belief that the rest of their caucus was even more flawed or a bare political calculation that location matters more than competence, the result should have Canadians eager to take decision-making power out of the hands of Paradis and his party.