07.06.2015 09:14 AM

Dingwall

This is long overdue. 

The media went after him because he didn’t kiss their ass. The Martin folks went after him because he had been loyal to Chretien. So they got together to end him. 

My experience was that he was as fearless as he was honest. Elsewhere, those attributes are rewarded. Not in Ottawa. 

All that said, I agree: Dingwall is owed an apology. 

12 Comments

  1. GFMD says:

    I think one of the most telling thing about the way the CPC deals with Canada is that, yes, Mr. Dingwall WAS entitled to his entitlements, and he incurred his expenses legitimately while diligently working to turn a money-losing Canadian Crown enterprise into a money-making one. If they weren’t fundamentally dishonest, they’d be too ashamed to ever utter the words “entitled to their entitlements” again.

    Think that matters to the right wing losers in power right now? Think again.

  2. Geoff says:

    Dingwall did himself in.
    “I am entitled to my entitlements.”
    Voters do not forget statements like that.

    • Bill MacLeod says:

      I suppose, but, umm, err….

      He was entitled to his entitlements. That’s why they’re called entitlements.

    • Marlene Anderson says:

      You’re right. That might have been a throwaway statement by Dingwall but it detonated like a nuclear bomb with Canadian taxpayers sick to death by the fat ‘entitlements’ the public sector doles out to itself. It so neatly summarized what the working stiffs believe runs through the minds of bureaucrats and politicians. One of the reasons the Duffy trial hasn’t raised the temper of Canadians is that there are no exciting revelations, no shock. The whole damn thing is just a confirmation of what we already knew. It just adds a little more accuracy to the actual numbers.

      • Kelly says:

        Re. Duffy…just wait. He’s just getting started.He’s not just fighting the charges, his goal is to destroy Harper. He’s a master of timing. The juicy bits are going to cone out at just the right time.

  3. Michael Bluth says:

    A big part of it was the utter cheapness. Didn’t he expense a pack of gum?

    One of the consultants in the eHealth scandal got dinged with expensing a coffee and a muffin.

    Were they ‘entitled’ to these minor purchases? Sure. Did they not understand how petty and small they made them look? Obviously not.

    Being cheap and petty are not attributes that will be rewarded. Ottawa or not.

    • jeff316 says:

      Exactly. Dingwall was entitled and to re-write history is phoney. The severity of Dingwall’s treatment was unfair, but the treatment in general was called for.

  4. Jim Walsh says:

    Why the recent trips down memory-lane? And the highly questionable lobbying activities on the part of Dingwall were never adequately addressed. But water under the bridge. The Chretien/Martin Liberal civil war was probably not the party’s finest hour, and likely some blame could be spread far and wide. But it’s 2015….

    • VH says:

      Well Jim, the thing I remember is that the Dingwall scandal taught me 2 things about this generation’s Liberals, neither of them good.

      At the party level, it taught me that Liberals are disloyal to the point of stupidity. As you recall, Dingwall turned around a money losing operation and brought “peace, order and good government” to the Mint. Apparently these foundational Canadian values weren’t good enough for the professional Liberals out there to have his back. Cons love money losing Crown corps because they can use them to whip up public support for killing middle class jobs and infrastructure in order to give massive tax breaks to millionaires.

      At the grassroots level, I personally had a massive argument on a then popular blog (no, not this one; which isn’t a blog anyways) where I was *the only one* to defend Dingwall. That told me that grassroots Liberals do not understand or value loyalty or good government. Again, the man turned around a money losing Crown corporation, wtf else did he have to do to get some support?

      A few years later, the Liberal party then confirmed to me, AGAIN, that they do not understand loyalty at the grassroots or professional level by subsequently *electing a leader who didn’t live in the country for 29 freaking years*. Apparently, there were no qualified candidates in this G7 country of 35M or so people and it was decided that we were in fact living in a banana republic where the successful son comes home after a lifetime abroad in order to bring his superior wisdom back to the local yokels.

      I haven’t “unlearned” those lessons yet as I feel I haven’t been given anything to work with and so now it’s 2015 and a certain “angry” person is looking better and better. No parking votes by default for me, the vote has to be earned.

      Just my 2 cents, YMMV.

  5. cgh says:

    You’re right on this one, Warren. Dingwall did great service to the country turning around the management and performance disaster that was the Mint. The sheer pettiness and self-righteousness of the Ottawa political establishment and the media was simply enormous, and it contributed greatly to the degrading of political discourse in the country. Why would anyone of talent want to run a Crown Corp when you get treated this abominably? Dingwall was asking for nothing more than what was in his contract.

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