It rather illuminates his decision to sit as an independent, rather than do the decent thing and run again in Edmonton-St. Albert on his own merits, a path his former colleagues were snippily suggesting mid-week.
“The Conservative party doesn’t own this seat just because I won it for them in the last election,” Rathgeber told reporters. “I don’t think they have any authority to make that kind of suggestion.”
Rathgeber, a lawyer, has been angry for a long time, perhaps rightfully so. In his blog, he wrote “My comfort level in caucus has been evolving for at least a year when I first spoke out against Ministerial opulence in a blog entitled “Of Orange Juice and Limos.” (It’s a blog post, by the way, not a blog.)
He said rural voters, with their native common sense, could not understand the huge bills for federal ministers’ limousines, which were bloated by charges for waiting, not driving, time. And then there was Bev Oda with her freshly squeezed orange juice, a mini-Wallin, a mini-Duffy. They sound like cupcakes, don’t they?
First, I don’t know why Rathgeber thinks farmers are any more opposed than townies to lavish personal spending by politicians, even if it’s their party. Edmontonians were equally disgusted, something Rathgeber cannot see despite being from Edmonton.
Second, MPs aim for cabinet. This can be a mistake. In a sinister, secretive and shameless government like this one, that tramples parliamentary traditions, committees run by Conservatives have real power. An MP can do a lot of good work here by his standards (they are almost always “his,” female Conservatives being thin on the ground).
The British Labour MP Chris Mullin — whose diaries on political life should be required reading for Rathgebers — was always being lured into promotion by prime minister Tony Blair when he felt he could be more effective on the backbenches. Mullin is a man without ego.
Yet thin-skinned MPs do yearn for promotion. When it doesn’t appear, they are hurt. Unless it’s a free vote, MPs are told by the whip when to appear and how to vote. But Rathgeber felt insulted that a man of his age and wisdom should be so instructed.
I understand why the Ottawa press should favour unfettered remarks in the House by MPs. It’s fun. But they’re calling it an issue of free speech.
I see it as a matter of putting one’s best foot forward. If the Liberals or the NDP want to charge ahead on an issue they see as crucial — finding out if Nigel Wright, recently of the PMO, wrote a $90,000 cheque so readily because he knew he’d be reimbursed, for instance — they don’t want their MPs getting up to babble on other matters dear to their hearts.
Political parties have to speak with more or less one voice. They may not want to parrot talking points as the Americans do, making fools of themselves when The Colbert Report makes a collage of their identical remarks on Fox News, memorized from “pundit prep sheets.”
But a certain unity is demanded. Rathgeber’s nose was out of joint because the government wanted less transparency on civil service salaries than he did. The government wouldn’t budge.
Again, Rathgeber had a point. As he said on his final blog post as a Conservative, “I joined the Reform/conservative movements because I thought we were somehow different, a band of Ottawa outsiders riding into town to clean the place up, promoting open government and accountability. I barely recognize ourselves, and worse I fear that we have morphed into what we once mocked.”
Well, yes. Stephen Harper’s armoured limousine flies around the world like Eurotrash. His lavish plane has been repainted Tory blue, a colour not found on the Canadian flag. Harper long ago found his Napoleon pants. Rathgeber’s exit won’t change that.
But Rathgeber himself accepts a fine salary and lavish pension that he has chosen not to forgo. It’s fine for him to deplore the trough, but he has a pretty nice trough of his own, albeit a lonely one.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Heather Mallick
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