This is why you don't want a separatist helping run the country?

I’m not much a fan of Jean Lapierre. At all. I’ve said, as loudly and as often as possible, that I don’t think he has any place near the federal Cabinet table. But I still think any and all calls for his head over the Jetsgo collapse are completely, 100% absurd.

None of the complaints make any sense. How, exactly, was he supposed to “intervene” when the free-market system in place prevents him from doing so? (If you have a beef on this front, it’s with the folks long before him who deregulated, not the guy who happens to be in Transport now.)

What was he supposed to do, once the airline had already collapsed, to clean up the mess? Jetsgo is gone. Finished. Kaput. Lapierre may have been able to piece together a political career that should have been long buried, but he still can’t be expected to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

And how, exactly, has he gone “AWOL” by carrying on with a trip to Israel? I don’t know about you, but personally, I’d rather have the man in charge of our airports taking notes in the country with the best airport security in the world - not idly commiserating with stranded March Break travelers. It’s not as though the guy’s on a junket to the Bahamas; he’s in Jerusalem, for crying out loud.

I hate that I’m stuck defending Jean Lapierre. But what I hate even more is the inclination to blame someone - anyone - in a political position when things go wrong.