Michael Chong: Trading a cabinet seat for the backbenches?
November 27, 2006 · By Aaron Unruh
If this is true, and there is a significant chance given the source that it isn’t, then Mr. Chong is truly insane. Giving up a cabinet seat over…this?
Update: Commenter Jeff confirms the rumour. The Halton region’s primary export these days seems to be pains-in-the-ass.
It is nice to see that these former Progressive Conservatives (you know, the caring and loving half of the marriage) are contributing so much. It’s times like this that I wish that Harper, Toews, Day and the rest of the Alliance had gone it alone. As Belinda, MacKay, Turner, and now Chong have demonstrated, the PCs are little bomb-ombs walking amongst us.
Perhaps it’s time to begin detonating them pre-emptively?
Update: And Chong’s announcement comes on the same day as the London by-election, far in advance of the polls closing. What a coincidence.
Update: Frank Parker:
…what he has done today has added fuel to the Bloc Quebecois’ fire. They can easily paint this as a man from the “rest of Canada†opposes recognizing Quebecois as a sociological nation. After Bill Graham, Stephen Harper and Jack Layton put aside partisan differences in the name of federalism, I am disappointed with Bob Rae, Gerard Kennedy and Michael Chong.
Indeed. Harper is currently going through the same experiences that Mulroney did with his small-minded, Anglo, Ontarian MPs.
I would say that this means that Harper is not going to allow a free vote on this, at the very least Cabinet is going to be forced to follow the leaders line, and that Chong is a principled politician who refuses to compromise his principles for simple political gain.
I don’t agree with his position, but I do admire his balls.
Type your comment here.oh, it be true…
Do you recognize the usefulness of cabinet solidarity in parliamentary systems?
So Aaron, do you then believe Harper was wrong when he said that Paul Martin should have allowed his cabinet vote their conscience when voting on the civil unions bill?
Perhaps a cabinet position is not worth destroying the country? Progressive Conservatives are federalists and have the balls to stand up for their country when it is threatened.
“Perhaps it’s time to begin detonating them pre-emptively?” That’s been going on for some time now.
Arron, could you please stop changing your comments after the fact.
“So Aaron, do you then believe Harper was wrong when he said that Paul Martin should have allowed his cabinet vote their conscience when voting on the civil unions bill?”
Paul Martin billed the SSM vote as a free vote. It isn’t a free vote when the cabinet is whipped.
That having been said, Martin had a right to whip his cabinet on that vote. Just as I hope Harper does in the next SSM vote.
I changed my comment before your post appeared, Tom. Please stop whining.
Perhaps you changed it before it appeared; however, I could very well have started typing my comment in between and not have seen your change, n’est-ce pas?
““Perhaps it’s time to begin detonating them pre-emptively?†That’s been going on for some time now.”
Right. The party totally provoked Garth.
As a Federal Liberal, I have to agree with you.
Split up the party!
I see cabinet solidarity and party whips in exactly the same light Aaron – they are tools designed to ensure loyalty to the party as opposed to loyalty to principles, constituency, or nation.
Thank God there is a politician who has real principles that he is willing to give up his cabinet post. I do not support many of Chong’s politics but I have one issue that there is not compromising on is that of being Canadian.
Harpers pandering now for the Quebec vote is showing the true colours of this hypocrite which was to be expected.
We need more politicians like Chong.
Well… I’d say that the old Progressive Conservatives would be a lot more sympathetic to that sort of motion than the old Reformers.
(And anyway, the old Reformers are old Progressive Conservatives, ones who left in the late 1980s and early 1990s…)