The Great PC Leadership Debate: Those Feathers Can Hurt!
Well.
The reports of the so-called PC Leadership Forum in Medicine Hat last night look less like a hard-hitting battle, than a teen-girls' pillow-fight.
The odd jab and poke, here and there, but no one seems to want to take out the big guns on the so-called "contenders" who look more like "pretenders".
The biggest question, no one, including the mainstream media seems to want to ask:
Gary Mar, Tell us about the tax-payer dollars you funnelled to Kelly Charlebois.
Explain to us, as leader, how your explain sending $400,000.00 his way in an untendered contract with no proof of any work of any kind provided for that contract.
Explain to us, as leader, if it was just a coincidence that this same Kelly Charlebois was your former executive assistant.
It's truly curious, isn't it?
I mean - if I was vying for the leadership of this party, if I wanted to "raise the bar" of what we should be demanding of our future leader, I would be hammering Gary Mar with this question every single opportunity I had.
And yet.. when the opportunity arises to raise the issue, we hear... nothing.. crickets chirping.
How can this be?
I'll tell you.
Because no one in mainstream politics wants to change the game. In order to gather money and bodies for support of your political goals, the conventional wisdom in the PC Party of Alberta is that you need to be able to use taxpayer dollars to repay your friends. Because with the exception of the very few, no one seems willing to give hundreds of hours or thousands of dollars without an expectation of payback.
So.
The prospective leaders ignore this dirty little not-so-secret-secret.
Because, imagine, if in the middle of a leadership race, you sent a clear and unequivocal message to your supporters, "There will be no payback".
Suddenly the cheques would dry up and the bodies knocking on doors and making phone calls would start to vanish.
And, I mean, it's not like it's THEIR money they are using for repayment, is it?
No.
It's yours.
And mine.
Think about that as you watch the leadership race unfold in this Province - and then ask yourself - who is more shameful: Gary Mar for using tax-payer dollars to repay his friend.. or other leadership contenders who refuse to ask him about it?
Wasn't it Edmond Burke who said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
**P.S.: I have sent the following twitter to ask each of the leadership hopefuls:
re debate, why no discussion re Gary Mar's diversion of over $400,000 tax dollars in untendered contracts to his former EA?I will, with great anticipation, await their responses (or lack thereof) and report later.