Rempel-Garner on Rod Philips resignation.

 Michelle Rempel-Garner is in the running for the worst possible choices to put in a shadow cabinet minister for health.

After Ontario MPP Rod Philips resigned as Finance Minister for a trip south during lock down and effectively lying, she commented on his decision to resign. She called the move dumb and claimed it had unintended consequences; specifically that now it would make her look bad if she also broke the rules.

This is INSANE.

YOU ARE THE SHADOW HEALTH MINISTER FOR THE OPPOSITION PARTY!!!!!!!!!

I can agree that people blow things out of proportion and that resigning may not be necessary in all circumstances. But, there are 2 fundamental problems; the cover up efforts by Philips and the fact that Garner is in a health focused position.

What makes the Philips case so egregious was the lengths he went to, including time delayed releases on social media to make it appear as though he were in Canada still. And worse, some were even urging Ontarians to make sacrifices. To avoid travel. IF there was something dumb about it, it was Ford allowing him to resign rather being seen as either firing him or asking him to resign.

Had he not gone to such efforts to hide his travel from the public... maybe some lesser punishment may have been acceptable.

But, some sort of reprimand is in order. Politicians in general shouldn't be breaking or even bending the rules. It isn't relevant whether or not they followed procedures. These are civil servants and this is part of the price of making your living off of the backs of tax payers. You cannot turn around and disregard the very advice you are giving the public while continuing to draw a salary paid out of their pockets. 

Giving up cushy positions in the government is less than a slap on the wrist. These are elected officials and they cannot be removed except by choice or during an election cycle.

Which brings us to Rempel-Garner. She never had much credibility in my books. But she has now trodden into the territory of becoming un-redeemable. With a single message she has basically admitted that she views the current public health advice as a inconvenience to her and not worth actually following otherwise. All while her job at the moment effectively revolves around criticizing the current government's handling of the pandemic. 

She is part of the problem now, but she is criticizing those attempting a solution. All while receiving a paycheck, funded by the people she just effectively slapped in the face with her comments. That is expert level A-hole. And, unless she or her party leader choose to do something about it, the people really can't do anything about her without an election. 

For a member of a party which doesn't shut up about Truedeau's moral corruption this is one hefty dose of double-standards. In fact, she should be ejected from caucus simply to save face on the topic of moral corruption. That won't happen of course, because the leader of their party is already mired in his own moral corruption issues after basically calling residential schools a good thing that simply went wrong. (This parody is actually remarkably accurate of the spirit of what was said.)

Again, what makes politician's different is that there is no employer that can fire them and the citizens are forced to pay taxes which pay their paychecks (which they get to vote on annually to make them bigger). They should be held to a higher standard. Philip's actions were the barest minimum. He isn't finance minister, but he is still a publicly funded MPP. Garners reaction on the other hand was an insult to the Canadian people.