I have wanted to do a rant on Peter MacKay but have been beaten to it, at least partly, by Chantal Hébert. Here is a superb article about Mr. MacKay’s time as Justice Minister. I will recap just a few of Ms. Hebért’s comments:

• the minister’s Internet surveillance bill, a proposed law whose intrusiveness may not pass muster with the courts.
• Then there is the prostitution bill that MacKay brought forward last month.It is not clear that it is more Charter-proof than the struck-down law it seeks to replace.
• The justice portfolio has, on two notable Canadian occasions, been a springboard to national leadership. In this instance history is not in the process of repeating itself.

I’m sure you get the general tone of Hebért’s article. This on MacKay as Justice Minister.

Now for a little bit of extra information. Here is the usual Wikipedia entry, a good background on Peter MacKay. Let me summarize a few key points here.

• MacKay became leader of the Conservative party due to the Orchard deal. This deal included: no merger with the Canadian Alliance, revisit NAFTA, review railway subsidies, and preserving the environment. I believe every part of this deal has been broken by Mr. MacKay and the Conservative government of Steven Harper.
• As Minister of Foreign Affairs: presided over the slow Lebanon evacuation, sided with Bush and the Conservatives in opposing a UN call for a ceasefire against Israel, and called Hezbollah a cancer. Luckily Hezbollah can be a terrorist organization simply because our government says it is.
• As Defence Minister: took a $16,000 helicopter ride from a fishing camp to Gander. Then this: In 2008, MacKay announced a broad exhaustive and very expensive program to upgrade the Canadian military’s equipment, spending over $400 billion over 25 years. Unlike every previous spending announcement of its kind, no “white paper” or detailed breakdown of this number was available nor was any claimed to exist.

Since the last point involves the F-35, about which I’ve ranted before, I cannot stop myself from adding this pointer, where you will find that the chief of defense staff contradicts Peter MacKay’s claim that the F-35 is the only sufficiently stealthy and advanced plane that will work for Canada.

I submit that all the above makes Peter MacKay a legitimate person of interest.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably guessing what the dumb question is. Here it is: how do you suppose people like Peter MacKay keep their jobs, while being reassigned willy-nilly? Is is because they are under Steven Harper, where the key qualification is to say Yes? To anything?

It is a dumb question, eh?