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While the headwaiter’s away…

This Magazine Staff

Now that The Headwaiter is out of the country for a few days, we can rest easy that he won’t go and hand GST revenues over the Assembly of First Nations or something equally idiotic.
At any rate, while The Headwaiter is bent on disembowling the federal government, two of his Quebec ministers are behaving, well, like federal ministers. Yesterday’s Globe reported how Justice Minister Irwin Cotler has a six-point list of priorities (priorities! Imagine that), including a much-needed overhaul of the mechanism for the appointment of federal judges. Full steam ahead at Justice.
Meanwhile, Stephane Dion continues his efforts to wrestle Environment out of the hands of the tree-huggers and turn it into a serious economic ministry. He went to Calgary (!) a few weeks ago to outline his goal to make environmental issues part of the strategic planning (national strategy! Imagine!) that comes out of the central agencies (Treasury, Finance, PMO). That is, environment would become just another element of the decision-making process.
At the same time, Dion continues to do the jobs of two other Ministers from Quebec — Lucienne Robillard (intergovernmental affairs) and whatever it is that Jean Lapierre is supposed to be doing. The media obviously trusts Dion more than they trust these two to say something remotely intelligent on their files.
Any chance we can arrange to keep The Headwaiter out of the country for a while? Maybe we can convince him to hitch a ride back from Russia on a sub.

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