Flaherty flew off on a trade mission to Asia 24 hours later and Parliament was adjourned for the Easter break a week later. But since the House reconvened on Monday his seat has continued to remain vacant.
His last tweet dates back to the March 21 budget . He has not given a post-budget speech in Canada since the day after its presentation. The speech delivered to a Vancouver business audience is not listed on his department’s website.
Officials initially attributed the minister’s absence from the House to a heavy travel schedule. Flaherty has also been battling a rare skin disease. But judging from a press release issued in his name last week, neither prevented Flaherty from finding time to go through the NDP’s resolution handbook with a fine-tooth comb, the better to attack the party on the eve of its national convention.
Based on a photograph posted on the home page of the finance department, the minister was on the Hill for the first part of this week. It shows Flaherty alongside his India counterpart in the lobby of the Commons and it was taken on Monday.
The budget is the top item on a government’s agenda and the Conservatives have staked their fortunes on convincing voters that they are the best possible custodians of the Canadian economy.
Perhaps the best one can say about their current approach to showing that they are keeping their eye on the economic ball is that it is counterintuitive.
For a federal finance minister to drop off the parliamentary radar for a full month is rare. When that month happens to immediately follow the presentation of the budget, it is unheard of.
In the absence of the government’s chief budget salesman, the opposition parties have been tearing a strip off the Conservatives over a budget hike in tariffs on a long list of imported consumer goods.
The government has been scrambling to deal with a backlash over RBC’s importation of foreign workers to take over Canadian-held jobs.
National Revenue minister Gail Shea has been struggling to explain why the media seem to be doing a better job at ferreting out Canadian holders of offshore accounts than her department . All those items and more are covered in the 2013 budget.
Senior Conservatives insist that one should not read anything significant into Flaherty’s prolonged absence. But then, it is almost as risky for a government member to indulge in speculation about the future of the finance minister as to discuss the succession of the prime minister himself.
Those who toil on the top floors of Bay Street’s corporate towers on the other hand feel no such compunction. In Canada’s financial capital, many are still puzzled by Flaherty’s recent efforts to talk lending institutions out of lowering their mortgage rates. From their perspective, the move is at odds both with Flaherty’s track record as a free-market champion and his membership in a populist government.
On Parliament Hill, the finance minister is widely seen as an essential part of the keel of the Conservative ship but according to senior civil service sources his stabilizing influence has been on the wane.
A mid-mandate cabinet shuffle is expected to take place in the summer. Ministers who are not planning to run again will likely be dropped to put a new face on the government.
Over the course of his budget day interviews, Flaherty maintained that he was not on the way out.
But if running a government were a chess game, the finance minister would be the queen, a piece that has a latitude unmatched by any of the other pieces that are at a prime minister’s disposal. These days it feels like Flaherty is less and less at play.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Chantal Hébert
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