Fred Loiselle - Another Big Mistake

So it's been two weeks since Harper surprised Canadians with his two "contentious” cabinet appointments. Mr. Emerson did what has never been done before by crossing the floor before even being sworn in or showing up for the first day of work. I’ve avoided commenting on this scandal as I worked on his campaign and for me it is a complicated set of questions. Oddly enough, Mr. Martin has probably come closest to capturing my own feelings. I’d probably tone down the rhetoric just a bit.

Now that everyone in the country has an opinion on the Emerson fiasco and the Fortier decision has split the country down linguistic lines I had wondered if the whole thing would blow over.

Then Mr. Fortier appointed his Chief of staff: Fred Loiselle.

There were a couple sentences at the end of a Globe article on how Harper’s transition team had done a terrible job in screening candidates for Minister’s offices and now the PMO was having to direct the troops. Here’s the relevant bit from the article:

The veteran MP yesterday questioned the hiring of Fred Loiselle as chief of staff to Public Works Minister Michael Fortier.

Mr. Loiselle was involved in the 2000 Canadian Alliance leadership bid of Tom Long, in which some of his Quebec workers bought memberships in bulk and affixed the names of deceased party members. Mr. Loiselle, who headed the Quebec portion of the campaign, took responsibility for the difficulties and resigned, although he said he didn't know of the scheme.

"If I was looking to set a new tone, in terms of doing politics differently, I don't think I would have hired him," the MP said.

Critics said that the recent sponsorship scandal centred in Quebec should be cleaned up by someone above reproach.

So why would you hire a scandal-ridden operative to run the show?

Because he was your former campaign manager.(It's the only on-line article I could find)

Something no one has mentioned in the coverage of our un-elected senator cabmin is his aborted leadership attempt against Joe Clark in 1998. As an aside, this makes the “I didn’t want to run” defense a little harder to swallow. It sounds a lot more like “I didn’t think I’d win.”

What else has Mr. Loiselle been doing? Well he was a senior advisor to Belinda Stronach’s leadership bid, working with the likes of David Peterson and Bob Rae.

So the new chief of staff to the un-elected Minister of Public Works, the man who will control the gates of the largest government Ministry is a man who was forced to resign on account of a partisan corruption scandal and has a working relationship with one (Stronach) maybe two (Rae) Liberal leadership candidates.

Let's leave it as it was put best: "If I was looking to set a new tone, in terms of doing politics differently, I don't think I would have hired him," the MP said.