2016…the year that politics went stupid…er!

 

If you are like me you actually held out some delusional hope that Rana Bokhari was not going to be some lame duck Liberal leader that sat on the liberals chances of winning and cooked the situation so bad that we had not chance. Yes readers Im liberal in many ways and I was not shocked at all that Rana screwed the pouch on her first outing as a leader. Now many say that leaders don’t necessarily cause elections to fail, I beg to differ, she did just about everything in her power to ensure that Brian Pallister would win the election. From poor debates to showing she was totally inept at reaching out to the public! She basically made sure the right leaning leader, as much as we don’t like him was set to win.

Again being a middle of the road to slightly left of middle of the road kind of guy I really scratched my bald head over this one. See I figured that considering whom was the leader prior to Lie’n Brian we would really end up with a Liberal minority this time, and when you look at the potential choices Manitoba faced between Pallister and Greg “king of the world” Selinger…well you would think we would pick the one that reminded us less of that itchy STD kind of feeling you get when you look at them. And to say the least you would think that we…as Manitobans….we would pick a slightly progressive thinking liberal leader who guided us to the holy land over the evil and slimy looking lifer politician that was in the camp of ex prime minster…and unholy embarrassment….Brian Harper….a name most of us want to strip from our brains like memories eaten by syphilis. Come to think of it…that’s a tough choice Brian and Brian or a brain melting disease that causes death and strikes you when you are out having fun and not thinking….wait…same thing?

 

Okay, so fast forwards past the damn election…way to go Manitoba this is what we have to put up with! Okay, so Brian P sets up his cabinet and like a conservative would he strips out jobs and makes others double up on their portfolios, essentially ensuring that no one portfolio in a persons control gets the proper care and attention that it deserves…and he chooses what can only be described as the single most RANDOM way of selecting who is going to take care of them. Lets review his cabinet of 12 or as I like to call them….the legion of the doomed!

Before I start let me remind everyone that he had 40 people to spread these damn portfolios across and instead of taking them and doing a great job finding out who gets what and who should be in charge of what…and maybe picking a better sized cabinet…he went with these…thanks Manitoba for at least 4 years of this bull shit!

 

The new Manitoba government cabinet is as follows:
• Brian Pallister (MLA for Fort Whyte) – premier and president of the executive council; minister of intergovernmental affairs and international relations.

                Okay, this makes a bit of sense in that he is the Premier and president to the Executive council….but why take on intergovernmental affairs and international relations. He is a teacher by trade (taught social studies at William Morton Collegiate) and also a Financier. Okay, this is not that bad a match, but did he make better choices later on…..As expected…Fuck no! The New Premier of the land, my opinion only, used the dart board to collect his 12 and hand out the damn jobs.

 

• Heather Stefanson (MLA for Tuxedo) – minister of justice and attorney general, Keeper of the Great Seal of the Province of Manitoba, deputy premier.

                Heather is probably a great lady, but first question I have…what the hell is the “Great seal of the province” and why did I not know that we had one?  Okay, on to business. Heather is a fellow Financial type with the Premier, they also share some time in federal office but why the hell is she the minister of Justice and attorney General. I kind of figured that maybe…just possibly…someone with some law experience should get that cabinet post. This is a MASSIVE WTF kind of a selection for the leader to make and I really hope that he realizes that the dart landed in the wrong damn spot. How do you select a securities professional as our Justice minister?

                 
• Cameron Friesen (MLA for Morden-Winkler) – minister of finance;

                So you wake up in the morning and you think “Damn Im a great musician and have a great education in music, I have degrees in music…now what job am I going to get now that I am elected” and the answer is Finance leader of the province…how fucked are we?

                Cam is probably a great guy, he apparently was a great and loved school teacher who taught in western Manitoba for up to 12 years and apparently he can play great music….but what the hell is Brian thinking making him the guy that is going to lead our financial portfolio for four years?  This is a joke right?  I don’t get it but it must be a joke…and the worst part…its not the funniest one here or the one with the weirdest punch line.

• Kelvin Goertzen (MLA for Steinbach) – minister of health, seniors and active living;

                Soooo, you think minister of health, seniors and active living…you think retired Doctor, nurse….Good life fitness clerk?  Nope, Brian put Kelvin Goertzen in that spot…and what does Kelvin have as a back ground…nurse…doctor….Fitness pro….lifted a weight once? Nope, Kelvin is a financial guy too. He has degrees in finance, economics, commerce and law….so well planned out! Im guessing he wont worry about our health as much as how to cut corners, lay off doctors and nurses and bring that pesky health thingy under control. Scares the SHIT out of me!

                This is the same issue we had the last time Slash and hack politics got at the health care industry! We

• Ian Wishart (MLA for Portage la Prairie) – minister of education and training;

                Ian Wisharts only claim to being a good candidate for education and training minister is that he went to school. No, that’s it! He did not even go to school to learn how to be a teacher..he never taught…he has no way of seeing what a teacher or educator goes through at work, no idea how to help them or how to build a better education program….he is…educated in farming…..I shit you not! This stuff writes itself folks!

                Ian went to the U of M….to learn…wait for it….Agriculture! He served as president of Keystone Agriculture and on the executive of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and a few other Agriculture based groups.  And damn it…he is  our education and training minister now!

• Scott Fielding (MLA for Kirkfield Park) – minister of families;

                The minister of families is in charge of things like Adoption, abuse registries, poverty reduction, child and family services, Children with disabilities, Community living, Foster Care, and anything having to do with helping families and members of the community with the challenges they face every day related to simply living. So, who does Brian give this post to…a financial guy! See the issues we are going to visit in the next four years yet?

                Scott was a financial guy from the get go and he was even on the finance board when he was a Winnipeg councilor. This post makes about as much sense as the rest however and scares me as a parent of a child with special needs because I can see Hack and Slash rules coming our way to cut corners, financial assistance and such. Scary!

• Blaine Pedersen (MLA for Midland) – minister of infrastructure;

                What does the minister of infrastructure do exactly?  Well they are in charge of our roads and bridges and building things. They ensure that we have proper roads and bridges and they are actually also in charge of “government services” which is essentially in charge of the same things. So, who do you give this post to… a builder…an engineer…a project planner….Fuck No! I want a farmer!...wait..what?

                Yup good old Brian picked Blaine to be our infrastructure minister. Blaine is a farmer, and a damn good beef farmer from what I am told.  You would think that he would be a great fit for Agriculture minister but damn it he should learn to build roads and bridges! Can anyone else see the stupidity in the selection process and how scary Brian Pallister is becoming with his logic. Oh, and the agriculture position…goes to a school administrator! But we will get to him.

• Eileen Clarke (MLA for Agassiz) – minister of Indigenous and municipal relations;

                So, you are looking for a minister to take care of aboriginal affairs…pick a white chick with no aboriginal blood in her…that’s gonna make our aboriginal people feel taken care of. Okay, so to be fair I get that Eileen is going to be good at the municipal relations portfolio as she was a mayor of a small town and probably has great experience because of her being the VP for the association of Manitoba municipalities. But indigenous affairs portfolio….really/

                The sad part is that Brian had two aboriginal members (Metis) on his team who have seats! Okay, so Bob Lagasse is a newbie that has zero experience yet, but Dr. Alan Lagimodiere (Selkirk) is Metiz and a veterinarian with lots of political experience. This is a flub and insult all in one!

 

• Cathy Cox (MLA for River East) – minister of sustainable development;

                Brian went full on stupid with this selection and even went as far…simply to piss people off…to even change the name of the portfolio simply to confuse and to create a level of WTF that will cause people to ignore the minister herself. First off lets handle the change, what is the Minister of Sustainable development…it’s the old conservation minister, you know environmental stuff! They changed the name to sound more PC (read politically correct…not the other PC) and to sound more artsy I guess. This pissed off a great deal of people and many of the conservation groups have come out crying foul and saying that they basically changed it to make it easier to rape the lands and lakes!

                Okay, all that smoke and mirrors aside, who did they pick to do this job….a complete new person with no real resume to speak of…other than volunteering a whole lot…and I mean a WHOLE LOT. Now she is probably a great person, but to be given anything more than a seat to sit in on Broadway is a joke. She has no education, no back ground and probably no clue how to do this job. The agriculture guy would have been far better, hell a farmer in charge of conservation makes more sense than a life long volunteer for cancer care, heart and stroke and about any other group she could volunteer for….and to say volunteer does not really say what she did as a volunteer. I volunteered once, sat at a door and looked mean! Not sure if that is what she did but maybe?

 

• Cliff Cullen (MLA for Spruce Woods) – minister of growth, enterprise and trade;

                The minister of growth, Enterprise and trade typically is going to be a finace guy, a guy with economics back grounds, a scholar of sorts in the business of money and attracting business to the province, you would think this would be the ONE spot that Brian P has down pat…you would think. The guy picks Cliff Cullen….a guy that has a degree from the U of M.  in ….wait for it….Agriculture! A guy with a back ground in the Agriculture and environmental sector should be a no brainer for things like an environmental post, but no…he is going to be in charge of us getting and keeping jobs!

                The horror show of a selection gets better, he served as a manager of the association for a clean rural environment! So, yah…jobs and enterprise is a great spot for him….Wait what the…never mind!

• Ralph Eichler (MLA for Lakeside) – minister of agriculture;

                I think we have seen two to three people with agriculture back grounds on the cabinet right now. So it should have been very easy to have the minister of Agriculture have a agricultural back ground, graduate from that faculty at the U of M or some other facility and or someone that has…I don’t know…sat in a tractor once…once! You would think…but no, Ralph Eichler served as a administrator for the Interlake school division and was a business owner. Now the bio did not say if the business was a small farm….. But seeing what we have seen so far I’m fairly sure it would be far wiser to assume it was selling jelly beans to leprechauns and not something logical!

                Its important to note that NONE of these post screw ups are the fault of anyone but Pallister, whom may go down in the annals of Manitoba Political history as the dumbest  Premier so far, or at least the one we suspect the most of having a brain injury or mental defect!

• Rochelle Squires (MLA for Riel) – minister of sport, culture and heritage and minister responsible for francophone affairs and status of women.

                Now being a minister of sport is a fairly easy job I think, figure out how much money you have and split it up to different sports, make sure that the rules of play and that the different Manitoba sport federation departments are not stealing you blind and go from there. Add the minister of culture and heritage and you need some specialization involved and to all of that Rochelle is probably not a bad selection. She does hold a bachelor of arts in communications from the U of W and a masters in fine arts from UBC, so damn it if Pallister did not get one right….oh, and she is the minister of “status of women”…not sure what that is but being a women you would think that somehow qualifies her, or at least does not exclude her, I mean you would think by his record that he would have given that post to a dude but he got it right…didn’t he?

                Good old Brian could not sully his perfect score of WTF moments by getting one right…Screw that! He had to go and give us the ultimate head scratcher to date! Rochelle is also the minister responsible for Francophone affairs. That’s a post that requires the minister to look after the French speaking people in Manitoba, deal with their issues and try to make life better for them…and….wait for it….Rochelle does not speak French, in fact she suggested she did not remember any of her basic school French! Even I can count to…well Five. So, you need a French speaker in the cabinet to take care of this post and you elect to put someone that does not even have a basic grasp of the language. I think this says how important he felt the roll was, and how important the French people are to him.

• Ron Schuler (MLA for St. Paul) – minister of Crown services.

                So, what exactly is the minister of Crown Services, well before their were ministers in charge of different crown owned companies like Hydro, MPI, Lottories ext. Well they have all been shoved under Ron Schulers cap now. He is now in charge of all the crown corporations and public reviews as well as the accountability act.  And why bog down the poor guy with all these when Pallister will probably privatize most of them soon anyways.

                But who did he put in charge of a financial quagmire, someone with a finance back ground…he has a tone of those on his cabinet right now…someone with an accounting back ground…im sure he could drum one up!.....Nope, he picked a guy that has a degree in international relations and served as a school trustee! A former small business owner and a guy that volunteered a lot in the community…I see a theme being formed.

 

                Aside from elimination, change of names and merging of portfolios this is probably going to go down in the history of cabinets as the most under prepared, ill selected, joke of a cabinet in the history of Manitoba!

 

Again, thanks liberals for handing these ass hats the controls! This was your election to lose and you did a great job! (by the way…Im kind of jokeing about blaming the Liberals for the morons in blue…kinda).