Zaccardelli Must Resign -- Or Be Fired

It's turning out that the difference between the two is about the same as the ethical distance between old and new governments. Since January, Conservatives have happily embraced the same three monkeys approach to evil as Liberals. Harper began where Martin stopped and shows no signs of looking back. One of this Prime Minister's first — and worst — decisions was to make an unaccountable senator responsible for public works, among the most historically troubled big-spending departments and also the one that nurtured the Quebec sponsorship scandal. Not much later, that decision was followed by an equally cynical move that sliced the guts out of the Conservative party's defining Accountability Act by deleting the very access to information reforms needed to make government transparent. From there it was a slow roll downhill to last week when this government hit rock bottom. In one of those you-gotta-be-kidding moments too typical of this capital, Harper's government declared full confidence in Giuliano Zaccardelli just minutes after the RCMP Commissioner admitted keeping silent publicly about Maher Arar's innocence. Think about that. A party that fought and won an election on accountability is now saying it's acceptable to do next to nothing about a Canadian citizen rotting in a Syrian prison, ultimately provoking a needless and pricey public inquiry. Zaccardelli's years' overdue apology is welcome but his vague answers, and the government's supine willingness to accept them, leave only more questions. Did the RCMP gamble with Arar's well-being, and perhaps his life, in the expectation that Liberal resistance to an inquiry would keep the force's dirty secret? http://tinyurl.com/kja8m [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on October 4, 2006]

Note: http://tinyurl.com/kja8m