The stunning fall of the once-promising Marco MendicinoThe public safety minister is a bright and articulate former federal prosecutor who was determined and perhaps destined to be a rising star in the Justin Trudeau cabinet.
Recent antics underline what is becoming a stunning fall from grace for Mendicino as he stumbles and bumbles badly from issue to hot-button issue after just 18 months on the job.
Two-year-old revelations from Canada’s spy agency surfaced Monday which found that respected Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family in Hong Kong had endured Chinese state intimidation after his vote to condemn that country’s atrocious human rights record.
This refusal to answer the what-they-knew and when-they-knew-it question was repeated more than a dozen times Tuesday with Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and NDP MPs lining up as one to demand a clear response while, tellingly, the cheerleading Liberal MPs surrounding Mendicino mostly sat on their hands.
Then came Wednesday. Suddenly the entire Chong script changed.
After days of ignoring specific questions, the prime minister and Mendicino emerged to declare they learned about it on Monday.
Mendicino’s poor handling of this incendiary issue was just another hit on the soundtrack of his very bad year.
He was forced into a pride-swallow Tuesday by diluting his original assault-style firearms ban.
The new ban will only prohibit weapons manufactured in the future or those not even invented yet -- a jaw-dropping retreat for a minister who said banishing all these guns was essential to public safety just last year.
He recently declared that Chinese police stations in Canada had been closed by the RCMP, when they were not.
A two-year-old promise to set up a foreign agent registry in Canada, similar to what exists in the U.S. and other countries, has been spun off by Mendicino for pointless consultations without an end date.
His planned changes to allow crucial humanitarian assistance to flow into Afghanistan, where groups are holding back aid out of fear they’ll run afoul of Canada’s anti-terrorism laws, are moving forward in glacial slow-motion.
And lest we forget the notorious fib when he insisted police forces advised the government to invoke the Emergencies Act against the Ottawa convoy protest, a statement police deny.
There are many other missteps going back to the botched Afghanistan withdrawal when he was immigration minister, but space limits the list.
Sadly, Marco Mendicino’s once-bright future as a credible cabinet influencer has been hobbled by his so-many missteps.
He has clearly got to go.
That’s the bottom line..
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/don-martin-the-stunning-fall-of-the-once-promising-marco-mendicino-1.6382574