Covering my bases

Predictably, my inbox was filled with some choice words yesterday from Albertans’ about my Post column on Ralph Klein’s health summit performance (to be posted here over the weekend if you didn’t see it). My personal favourite was from a friendly lady who kept it short and sweet: “Klein will hopefully kill off the the (sic) last remaining commie liberal/ndp pricks come next election. Meanwhile, go fuck yourself.”

That one pretty well speaks for itself, I think. But the somewhat more thoughtful ones merit a response. Specifically, I should probably clarify my take on the conference as a whole.

Yes, I think Klein was embarrassing – the most embarrassing of the group, for not even bothering to put in an effort. But that said, I can’t believe how lightly the rest – and, specifically, one guy in particular - have gotten off.

For all the armchair quarterbacking he and his supporters did while Jean Chrétien was running these things, Paul Martin turned in arguably the most ludicrous performance of his political career in and around this thing.

He entered without any sign of having done his homework – after an entire summer in which he didn’t seem to be doing much else. He made much of having the whole thing televised, then tacitly acknowledged the counterproductiveness of that gambit by doing his key negotiating away from the cameras. He antagonized not just Klein, but many of the other premiers as well with juvenile stunts to steal their thunder at inopportune moments. He cursed while one of them called him on his idiotic “fix medicare for a generation” promise, then embarrassed himself further with stories about his aunt getting mad at him. And to top it off, our youthful PM – who bumped off his predecessor, recall, because he was supposed to be more vigorous and energetic – disappeared in the middle of the proceedings to take a nap while the premiers continued without him.

Worst of all – and the premiers share some of the blame on this – he achieved absolutely nothing to improve the system beyond the cash infusion that everyone knew was coming anyway. Honestly, this eleventh hour “deal” could have been reached over e-mail; how the PM needed three days to convince the provinces to take Ottawa’s cash will forever confound me.

So, uh, yeah. That’s what the big bad Ontarian thinks of how his hero is doing. Hope I didn’t judge him by too lenient a standard next to King Ralph.