Brent Rathgeber Leaves Conservative Caucus

[Spade]

Alberta MP Rathgeber resigns from Conservative caucus - Edmonton - CBC News
Lack of transparency cited.
Will he be the only one?

 

[Cannuck]

PMO communications director Andrew McDougall said on Twitter that Rathgeber should step down as an MP and allow a byelection because people in his riding elected a Conservative MP.

Really? I thought they elected Rathberger.

 

[WLDB]

Really? I thought they elected Rathberger.

Indeed. Voting for the name rather than the brand is the way people should do it.

 

[damngrumpy]

I do not think elected officials that resign from the party any party should step down and
run in a by election. It would cost even more money. Secondly this guy has a valid reason.
Harper is short on facts on the Duffy mess and no one believes him period I think this is a
road to ruin if the party continues to play the same game.
There are rumours and just rumours that a number of MPs are not too pleased
I think he did the right thing here for the right reasons. he knows he's likely finished but he
did the right thing anyway.

 

[Spade]

Tory no more: Brent Rathgeber bids adieu to caucus - Inside Politics

 

[Tonington]

PMO communications director Andrew McDougall said on Twitter that Rathgeber should step down as an MP and allow a byelection because people in his riding elected a Conservative MP.

Funny, I don't recall the Harper government saying the same thing when David Emerson, or Wajid Khan, or Joe Comuzzi defected to the Tories.

 

[Walter]

Sour grapes.

 

[Spade]

Sour grapes.

No, Walter, concentrate, Con sent straight.

 

[Walter]

No, Walter, concentrate, Con sent straight.

Sour grapes.

 

[WLDB]

Sour grapes.

I guess you would know.

 

[JLM]

I do not think elected officials that resign from the party any party should step down and
run in a by election. It would cost even more money. Secondly this guy has a valid reason.
Harper is short on facts on the Duffy mess and no one believes him period I think this is a
road to ruin if the party continues to play the same game.
There are rumours and just rumours that a number of MPs are not too pleased
I think he did the right thing here for the right reasons. he knows he's likely finished but he
did the right thing anyway.

Yep, if Harper is to hang on any credibility he simply has to remove the dead wood. (no pensions or payouts)

 

[Goober]

Sour grapes.

Walter - I told ya all this was acomin. Said it for the last few years. And the price if Harper continues in his manner of controlling things down to a pee break will be huge.
Clearly you and Harper prefer lapdogs.

Tory MPs who agree with Rathgeber but stay silent are unfit for office | Full Comment | National Post

This is a disgrace, and Mr. Rathgeber did the honourable thing in quitting the party. He will remain as an independent MP but has declared that he no longer can stand with the Conservative party.

And this poses a difficult challenge for all remaining Tory MPs. There’s a question they need to answer, and perhaps an even bigger follow-up question after that.

Consider that, Tory MPs, and answer. Is Mr. Rathgeber wrong?

Maybe some MPs could look me in the eye and say, yes, he’s wrong. Or perhaps some could earnestly tell me that, no, he’s right, but then go on to make a good argument for why the party is still worth supporting. Tougher, but, hey, possible.

But if there is any Tory MP out there who has to agree with me that Mr. Rathgeber is bang on, right on every last count, then here’s the follow-up question: Why haven’t you quit, too?

Brent Rathgeber, MP who quit Tory caucus, says he won’t answer to Stephen Harper | Canadian Politics | Canada | News | National Post

Condemning the increasing control un-elected staffers in the Prime Minister’s office have to lord over Members of Parliament, Brent Rathgeber — who resigned from the Conservative caucus on Wednesday night — spoke against his former party’s lack of commitment to openness and transparency.

“It’s difficult as a lawyer and MP to … be subservient to masters half my age in the PMO’s office,” Rathgeber said as he offered his first public comments from his constituency office in St. Albert on Thursday.

A spokesman for the prime minister’s office confirmed via Twitter that Rathgeber had resigned from caucus, and said the MP should resign from the House of Commons.

 

[Tonington]

Sour grapes.

Yep, lots of that from the PMO these days.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Even Tories are getting fed up.

Brent Rathgeber left the conservative caucus over refusals within his party to back measures to create greater transparency and accountability within government.

Why Brent Rathgeber Quit The Tories

His proposed legislation would have amended Canada’s Access to Information and Privacy laws to provide salary disclosure for employees of government institutions who earn as much as the minimum salary for a deputy minister, currently about $188,000.

Instead, a Conservative amendment put forward by Butt, the MP for Mississauga-Streetsville, suggested raising that number to the highest possible total income a deputy minister could make, about $444,000. The two NDP and one Liberal opposition members were vehemently opposed, saying the government’s amendment would make the bill useless.

According to Rathgerber.

“I joined the Reform/conservative movements because I thought we were somehow different, a band of Ottawa outsiders riding into town to clean the place up, promoting open government and accountability,” he wrote in a blog post Thursday. “I barely recognize ourselves, and worse I fear that we have morphed into what we once mocked.”

“What happened to the party of Preston Manning? What happened to accountability,” NDP critic Charlie Angus asked aloud.

“Everyone is on my side but my side,” Rathgeber said, watching from the sidelines as his disclosure and transparency bill was eviscerated.

Basically everything is being run out of the PMO with no accountability.

“The whole thing was just really a farce,” he told The Huffington Post Canada. Rathgeber said that months ago he had been informed that his bill would be amended, but he was given no indication that the bar for disclosure would be set so high. The Commons standing committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics held six meetings and heard from eight witnesses, but “it didn’t matter what any of them said.”

“The decision had been made months ago by staffers between the Justice ministry and PMO (Prime Minister’s Office), and it didn’t matter what evidence was presented or how persuasive the arguments were. CPC (Conservative Party of Canada) members had their voting instructions and without even speaking to support their amendments, they voted in lockstep, and you see the result,” he said, frustration ringing in his voice.

“Before I got into this, six or eight months ago, I didn’t know that these performance variances existed, and when I saw they were as high as 39 per cent for the highest level of deputy minister – I mean that is a lot of money. That’s $124,000. That’s more than double the average Canadian salary, and that compensation is flying completely under the radar, and the government for its own reason wants to keep it that way,” he said.

“I know that they were worried about some bad news story about mandarin X or deputy minister Y who makes an exorbitant amount of money in a department that is not doing very well, but as with all decisions that you’ve seen come out of PMO lately, even the political acumen is completely short-sighted,” he said.

Even McKay is talking about leaving if the method of choosing the conservative leader changes.

Peter MacKay Would Consider Leaving Tories If Leadership Rules Change

MacKay told National Post columnist John Ivison that if Conservatives vote to change the current leadership rules at a convention in Calgary this month and adopt a process that gives each member a vote, he may be one of many Tories who could bolt from the party.

Sounds like the marriage of convenience may be falling apart.

When MacKay and Prime Minister Stephen Harper agreed to merge the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties in 2003, the PCs insisted that each riding would have an equal say in a leadership vote. MacKay has said if that wasn't the case, there would have been no merger.

The idea was that regions with larger numbers of members, such as Western Canada, could not diminish the influence of other areas of the country such as Quebec or Atlantic Canada, where riding associations are smaller.

"Nobody can describe it as a unifying issue," MacKay said. "It's divisive. It pulls at old affiliations and old fault lines and I don't think we need that."

 

[Cannuck]

Re: Even Tories are getting fed up.

“What happened to the party of Preston Manning?

I ask myself that question all the time. Unfortunately, the Conservative Party abandoned fiscally conservative democrats like me.

 

[damngrumpy]

Re: Even Tories are getting fed up.

Being socially progressive and fiscally conservative I believe is a good balance in today's wold.
The problem is the current government has decided to be socially regressive and fiscally liberal.
Meaning they are undermining the foundations of our society while spending and giving tax breaks
to those who don't need them. The red ink is worse than any government in history and the chain
is going to be yanked. In America, Europe and now in Asia things are slowing down and sooner
or later the fiscal cracks we have papered over will begin to show.
I have said before the Tories will not have Harper for leader in the next election and its starting to
show there too. Jason Kenny is the fair haired boy and Peter McKay will either take him on or
leave the party in fairly short order.
The other pending problem is Trudeau, if his popularity grows and show no sign of slowing we
could face an early election.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Re: Even Tories are getting fed up.

I ask myself that question all the time. Unfortunately, the Conservative Party abandoned fiscally conservative democrats like me.

I wasn't a reform supporter, but there were things I did like about their platform, responsible government being one of the big ones. We certainly don't have that with the current conservative party, which seems to put expediency first even more than the last liberal government.

 

[Cannuck]

Re: Even Tories are getting fed up.

I wasn't a reform supporter, but there were things I did like about their platform, responsible government being one of the big ones. We certainly don't have that with the current conservative party, which seems to put expediency first even more than the last liberal government.

I'm hard pressed to find one thing the Conservatives have done better than the Liberals....which really shouldn't have been hard to do given the poor Liberal record on everything except balancing the budget. Anybody that claims to be a fiscal conservatives and supports the Conservative Party is either a liar or is deluded.

 

[WLDB]

Re: Even Tories are getting fed up.

Im surprised that MacKay is against one member one vote for choosing a new leader. I think thats the way they should all work. I guess he probably doesnt think he can win with that method in place. If Harper were to step down Mackay would be one of the top contenders for the position.

 

[Goober]

Yep, lots of that from the PMO these days.

Brent Rathgeber’s resignation is a dagger to Stephen Harper’s heart | Full Comment | National Post
Of such moments, revolutions are made. Edmonton MP Brent Rathgeber’s resignation from the Conservative caucus, which dropped inside the Ottawa bubble like a little concussion grenade late Wednesday, represents more than the loss of a single MP among the 164 Tories in the Commons. It is a dagger straight to the heart of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Unless he responds dramatically, effectively and soon, the betting on his stepping aside before the 2015 election goes from even to odds-on. It also becomes not only possible, but likely, that the caucus will suffer further defections. Such is Rathgeber’s standing among his colleagues, and such is the degree of unhappiness on the Conservative backbenches, that pressure will now mount for others to bolt.

To gauge the importance of this, we must first appreciate where Rathgeber comes from, whom he represents, and why he quit. This is no ****less Atlantic Red Tory, or an ambitious Ontarian disgruntled at his pending exclusion from cabinet. Rathgeber is a true-blue conservative, fiscal and social, from the heartland. He has a history of taking principled stands on issues that matter to the Conservative base — democracy, accountability, and fiscal probity. His departure therefore represents a sharp rebuke, if not a repudiation, by the base — in effect, by the Conservative party’s conscience.

He then proceeds to dissect, piece by piece, the bad strategy, bad faith, bad judgment and bad leadership that have in the space of a month put the Harper government in the ditch. “My constituents simply do not care what somebody, who they hope will never become Prime Minister, did or didn’t do seventeen years ago,” Rathgeber writes of the PMO’s new attack points aimed at NDP leader Tom Mulcair. For days now, it has been obvious these are doing the government more harm than good. Now the critique comes from within.