So what kept the rest of you boys at home?

The NDP and Grits are faulting Lawrence Cannon, the foreign affairs minister, for dispatching an underling to the Tuesday summit of 40 foreign ministers in London on how to best manage the Libyan mission.

"He should have gone," said Paul Dewar, the NDP's foreign affairs critic.

 
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon addressing the UN General Assembly. (CP)

Bob Rae, Dewar's Grit counterpart, chimes in to say he'd given Cannon the all-clear to cross the pond and there'd be no partisan criticism.

Actually, this is one of Harper's talking points, about an unnecessary election at a time of economic and geopolitical disarray. Cannon's focus on the campaign trail is by long-standing tradition. And his no-show in London is indeed a casualty of an election call pretty much as Harper warned.

So I'd have missed this particular opportunity to slag the Tories.

Actually, the party leaders have run pretty much a strictly domestic-issues campaign - their silence on Libya has been deafening. That's a contrast with U.S. presidential and Congressional races, where even hopefuls for Indiana 7 can expect to field tough questions on the world beyond the oceans.

Here's my one big question: To demonstrate their conviction on this point, why didn't one or more of the opposition parties think to dispatch their foreign affairs critics to London? Or is it possible that Dewar, Rae and Claude Bachand have seats to defend as Cannon does? Heck, they could have gotten a group rate from Transat and made a real show of taking the high road.  

Failing that, they or their parties could have told Canadians what they would have said in London.

No time for that either?

Okay, then we'll put it down as a cheap shot.

 

 

Comments

[Wascally Wabbit]

Clearly - no photo-ops were planned. No advantage to anyone. More to the point - I would have thought that Messrs. Rae and Dewar would have been sent by their bosses to make sure Mr. Harper's representative hasn't been sent with a new set of rules or commitments - which hadn't been presented to Parliament - or even I suspect - since Parliament isn't sitting - informally to those gentlemen!

[broostertoo]

"why didn't one or more of the opposition parties think to dispatch their foreign affairs critics to London?"

Since they'd have no status, other than as observers with limited (if any) access to the deliberations, why would they go? To stand around with the gaggle of correspondents covering the event, waiting for the vacant-as-usual post-conference communique?

Hardly a wise use of their time, election or not, IMO.