Jim Prentice, RIP

— 10.14.2016 12:34 PM

Here’s a column I wrote about the man back in April 2010. Condolences to his family and many friends. 

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He’s amiable. He’s smart. He’s reasonably bilingual. He’s well respected. He’s got movie star good looks. He’s seen as a moderate in a cabinet bursting at the seams with deconstructed Reformers.

And, most notably, he is the Conservative who lots of Liberals fear the most.

He’s Jim Prentice.

As everyone knows by now – and as Sun alumnus Greg Weston first revealed in an online scoop – Prentice shocked the somnolent capital yesterday afternoon, when he stood at the end of Question Period to offer his immediate resignation.

Clearly choked up, Prentice told the stunned House that he had taken a job at CIBC – where, presumably, he will not be working as a teller. The faces of his soon-to-be-former caucus colleagues were mostly inscrutable.

Some Reformer types, perhaps, were inwardly happy that one of the few Progressive Conservatives in the Harper government were leaving. Others, however, looked worried.

They should be.

For starters, the former Environment minister gave the Harper government a honest-to-goodness centrist, one whose instincts are much more attuned to his Ontario birthplace. Just last week, for example, Prentice surprised many with his decision to veto a gold mine at Fish Lake in B.C.’s interior.

Now liberated from the restrictions that cabinet places on every politicians’ ambition, Jim Prentice is free to do, and say, pretty much whatever he wants. And the question on every federal politico’s mind, last night, was whether Prentice wants the top job – Stephen Harper’s.

It’s not an idle question. As a formerly active federal Liberal, I can tell you that Prentice has always been the Conservative who made Grits nervous.

In three successive elections, Harper has shown he is singularly incapable of capturing his a Parliamentary majority. Women, younger voters, and not a few Central Canadians just can’t bring themselves to trust the moody, angry Conservative leader.

Prentice, however, has the style and sensibility that could easily attract a lot of soft Liberal vote. He’s clearly much more moderate than Harper – and he doesn’t attract speculation that he harbours a nasty hidden agenda.

For example, I can reveal that Jim Prentice is probably the only member of the Harper regime who was respected enough, and knowledgeable enough, to be hired by the previous Liberal government. Prentice’s skills as a negotiator attracted the attention of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, whose government retained him to work on aboriginal files in the 1990s.

The question, then, is whether Prentice plans to use his new job as a launching pad for a run at the Conservative leadership – when Harper takes his foot-stomp in the snow, that is.

Running for a party’s leadership from the outside cabinet is pretty much the only way to win. The aforementioned Chretien did it in 1990, as did John Turner in 1984 and Paul Martin in 2003. Harper himself ran as an outsider in 2002, for the Canadian Alliance leadership. (Kim Campbell ran while still a minister, of course, but we all know how that turned out.)

What will Jim Prentice do? Only he knows for sure.

But one thing is clear: he’s the candidate who makes ambitious people nervous.

On both sides of the House.


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Sorrow

— 10.14.2016 06:59 AM

Sometimes, even war room guys like me get a bit weary of  the metaphoric battlefield. Donald Trump’s daily outrages have lately had that effect on me – they just keep on coming, you know? They are bottomless, and they are exhausting.  Will it ever stop? Can’t he just go away so we can get back to a semblance of normal?

Accordingly, Bad Religion’s Sorrow has been echoing in my head since last week, when we saw them play it at Irving Plaza. Here’s Greg doing it, acoustic-style. It reflects the times.

(And, no, I didn’t know the good Doctor was that good on guitar, either.)

Father can you hear me?
How have I let you down?
I curse the day that I was born
And all the sorrow in this world

Let me take you to the hurting ground
Where all good men are trampled down
Just to settle a bet that could not be won
Between a prideful father and his son
Will you guide me now, for I can’t see
A reason for the suffering and this long misery
What if every living soul could be upright and strong
Well, then I do imagine

There will be sorrow
Yeah there will be sorrow
And there will be sorrow no more

When all soldiers lay their weapons down
Or when all kings and all queens relinquish their crowns
Or when the only true messiah rescues us from ourselves
It’s easy to imagine

There will be sorrow
Yeah there will be sorrow
And there will be sorrow no more

There will be sorrow
Yeah there will be sorrow
And there will be sorrow no more

Yeah there will be sorrow
Yeah there will be sorrow
And there will be sorrow no more


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