When the Conservative party's house organ, The National Spot, trashes one of Stephen Harper's ministers twice in a week, well maybe there's something seriously wrong with that minister and the prime minister who simply refuses to see reality. John Ivison again says that natural resources minister Gary Lunn knew or ought to have known about the problems plaguing the Chalk River reactor months before they became critical and, if Harper is looking to fire anyone, it probably should be the very guy he's been defending:
The Conservative government has laid the blame for the crisis at the feet of Linda Keen, president of AECL's regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday she was guilty of "needlessly endangering" the lives of Canadians by not allowing the reactor to reopen. In a letter to Ms. Keen, Mr. Lunn asked her to provide him with reasons why she shouldn't be fired.
But an audit of AECL's operations by the Auditor-General, released by the nuclear operator late on Wednesday, suggests that Mr. Lunn was well aware of problems at Chalk River, including technical compliance concerns on the part of the CNSC. In this light, if anyone should be fired, perhaps it should be him.
...an ill-prepared Mr. Lunn ...pitched headlong into the isotope crisis and proceeded to bully and hector a regulator who answers to Parliament, not the minister.
To no one's great surprise, Mr. Harper backed Mr. Lunn yesterday. Speaking in New Brunswick, he said his Minister had "acted beyond the call of duty," which suggests Mr. Dion is not going to get his wish. The nuclear regulator is required by law to be free from political interference, but for a Prime Minister and government whose modus operandi is to subject the wills of others to their own, this is an alien concept.
3 comments:
This week Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has been calling on PM Harper to fire Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn. Why? Because, Dion says, Lunn has shown incompetence because he only released a damning report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser this week — a report Lunn allegedly knew about since last September; and because he hasn’t been able to clean up all the issues at the Atomic Energy Agency of Canada (AECL), especially at Chalk River where the medical isotopes are produced.
What absolute hypocrisy! What Dion hasn’t said was that last September’s report was NOT the first such report. In fact, the issues that Dion thinks Lunn should have corrected in less than two years were problems that were obvious throughout the entire previous thirteen years the Liberals were in power. The more damning report was actually sent to former Liberal Minister Herb Dhaliwal on November 15th, 2002 — five years before the most recent one.
Why the self-righteousness? Why the hypocrisy? It just wasn’t necessary. While it is Dion’s right as the leader of the Official Opposition to criticize, and to question Lunn’s handling of the situation, the over-the-top blame simply shows the Liberal Party’s desperation to get back into power. And, now it is Dion who is going to have to wear the issue.
Kudos to Greg Weston for outlining the whole mess in his column in today’s Toronto Sun and to the anonymous public servant(s) who provided Weston with this information. It’s about time the federal bureaucracy and some in the MSM stopped blaming the Harper government for things that were done or not done on the previous government’s watch.
For example, Weston says:
“Seems the report that was made public this week has been around since last September. Turns out that’s about five years less than an even more alarming report on the same nuclear agency by the same federal watchdog buried by the Liberals since 2002….hardly a problem of the Conservatives’ making as Dion would have Canadians believe. Far from it. During their 13 years in office, the Liberals did a lot more to cause the mess at Atomic Energy, and a lot less to clean it up before they were turfed out of office in 2006.”
So, a very important question Dion needs to answer is:
While blaming Lunn for not releasing a report received last September, did he know that another more damning report had been received more than five years before in 2002?
In other words: what did Dion know and when did he know it? As Weston says in his final sentence:
“This week, Dion accused the current minister, Lunn of being ’secretive, insensitive and incompetent’ in managing the Chalk River issue. On that, the Liberals speak from experience.”
Perhaps, the PM should set up an inquiry or a parliamentary committee to get at the truth.
Sorry, Anon, nice dodge, a bit long perhaps, but Lunn is the natural resources minister and Harper is prime minister. I wish they weren't but they are.
Wow, a copy and paste defense from anon.
But anyway, it's not about the report from the AECL. It's that Lunn's behavior towards Keen is completely unprofessional and unbecoming of his position.
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