It's like The Sopranos : Stupid Pet Tricks Edition

With parliament adjourned for the summer and MPs back in their ridings hiding out/working the handshaking smiling barbie circuit, The Tyee reviews the five cabinet ministers from BC.
And lo, what Lotusland hath bequeathed to parliamentary democracy!

Jay Hill (Con - Prince George-Peace River)
Secretary of State and Chief Government Whip
~ The 200 page dirty tricks manual on how to subvert subcommittees not towing the Con line.

• Make sure the Conservative Party of Canada -- the party, not the government -- gets a say in which witnesses appear before the committee.
• If all else fails, shut the committee down.

Also leaked to the press was Hill's bullying of committee chairs who tried to get some work done on the committees rather than sabotaging them.

David Emerson (Con - Vancouver Kingsway)
Minister of International Trade and 2010 Olympics
~ Following an overnight conversion to the Cons after being elected as a Lib, with Emerson's invaluable expertise as a softwood lumber deal negotiator used as the justification, Emerson pushed through a deal - trade peace in our time, in TheTyee's happy phrase - which had the US threatening further litigation against Canada within six months.
~ The Five Ring Corporate Boondoggle and Homelessness Circus.
Nuff said.

Chuck Strahl (Con - Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon)
Minister of Agriculture, Agri-Food, and the Canadian Wheat Board
~ The Agri Min with the distinction of going to war against the Canadian Wheat Board, the most successful grain monopoly in the world. Tactics included "misleading plebiscite options; issuing 'gag orders' against CWB directors and staff; firing the CWB president during the election; arbitrarily changing the voters' list during the election; disenfranchising thousands of producers; sending multiple, numbered ballots to producers, then calling them to ask which ballot they wanted counted; no third-party spending limits".

Stockwell Day (Con - Okanagan-Coquihalla)
Minister of Public Safety
~ A rousing success really, compared to what we expected from him.
Aside from deciding not to hold a public inquiry into how the RCMP fucked over Maher Arar, making contradictory claims in the HoC regarding Afghan detainees, denying climate change on his blog, and being under RCMP investigation for paying off a political rival not to run against him, Doris exceeded all our expectations.

Gary Lunn (Con - Saanich-Gulf Islands)
Minister of Natural Resources
~ Bring on the nukes for the tar sands! Moratorium on oil tanker traffic off theBC coast? What moratorium? Apparently it was merely a gentlemen's agreement, according to Lunn.
~ Firing a government scientist who objected to introducing his work with the phrase "Canada's New Government", and then having to hire him back after the laughter subsided.

And so the legacy of Amor de Cosmos lives on.

The Amero....again.

Globe&Mail :
"Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge says North America could one day embrace a euro-style single currency. (snip)
The idea of a common currency has long been a subject of curiosity, particularly among Canadian academics, who see it as a way to escape sharp gyrations in the exchange rate.(snip)
Some proponents have dubbed the single North American currency the “amero.”
It is more likely, however, that a common currency would mean that Canada and Mexico would adopt the U.S. dollar, giving up significant economic control to a central bank dominated by the United States."

In 1999, former Alliance MP Herb Grubal wrote a paper for the Fraser Institute entitled The Case For the Amero : The Economics and Politics of a North American Monetary Union.

In it he describes how in March of 1999, Reform Party members Rob Anders, Rahim Jaffer and Jason Kenney
"spearheaded a debate in parliament over the issue of monetary union for North America. In the process, they asked the Prime Minister to form a committee of parliament to study the subject."

Well, so much for "being a subject of curiosity, particularly among academics".
Interesting how far back the public record on this idea goes among the gnugovs, although they do say they were expecting "some resistance".

In endnote #39 to The Case For the Amero, Grubal notes : "Resistance to the amero will be lessened by continuing to call it officially a "dollar" in the United States and Canada."

Oh come on now, Reformers, you know you really want to call it the "The Almighty Dollar" - after, you know, "Him".
However, given the current US trade deficit with China, a very good reason among many other very good reasons for Canada not to consider this idea at all, they might have to settle for the "Almighty Yen".

https://web.archive.org/web/20170104053114/http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/critical_issues/1999/amero/amero.pdf

(crossposted at The Galloping Beaver)