Angry in the Great White North

Conservative MP Monte Solberg is demanding the Finance Minister Ralph Goodale step aside:

Conservative Finance Critic Monte Solberg is demanding that Minister of Finance Ralph Goodale step aside following a CTV News report on the income trust debacle.

Solberg says he finds the report troubling and says that until all the facts surrounding the reported leaks are revealed, Goodale should step aside.

"Last night's report seemed to indicate that people did get advance knowledge, which completely contradicts what the finance minister told reporters and has told the House of Commons," Solberg told CTV Newsnet Thursday.

Too bad we don't have Question Period right now. This site of twenty opposition MPs in a feeding frenzy when a minister is wounded and bleeding is a sight to behold.

The report in question is that of a senior investor claiming, on camera, that he received a tip from a senior member of Ralph Goodale's office hours before the announcement was made that income trusts would not be taxed. This investor said he did not use the information, but the question remains: Who else received the same phone call, and who profited from it?

And why would tips be handed out in the first place? An expectation that some of the profits would eventually reach the Liberal Party? Or was it just a way of purchasing good will for the Liberal Party from influential business leaders?

Or maybe just a personal favour being done by a senior bureaucrat in the hope of landing a plum investment job after leaving the public service.

Still, CTV is calling this a debacle. "Scandal" may be only a few days away.

Oh, and Ralph Goodale will, of course, not step aside during any investigation of his office:

Prime Minister Paul Martin told reporters Thursday that there are no plans for Goodale to resign.

"The fact is that this is the knee-jerk reaction of an opposition MP who simply doesn't basically want to deal with the debate in a rational way," Martin told reporters in Toronto.

"The fact is that Mr. Goodale has said that there was not a leak from his department. The fact is he has also said that the Ontario authorities are in a position to do an investigation as they would do in any circumstance such as that, and obviously he and his department will cooperate fully with that."

Since when is asking a person under suspicion of a serious breech of procedure, or of allowing a serious breech to take place, to step aside until the issue is resolved an "irrational" reaction?

It's not irrational at all, and I suggested in the introduction to this piece, I'm certain more than a few Liberal MPs are thinking exactly the same thing. If I were Ralph Goodale, I wouldn't be too worried about Monte Solberg. I'd be looking at caucus colleagues for signs of someone ready to say, "Hey, Ralph, it's you or my riding. And I like being a Liberal MP!"