I’m sure it sounded like a good idea when Boston Globe columnist, Joanna Weiss, wrote it up. Her theme was about “tantrums”, beginning with airline steward Steven Slater’s dramatic resignation down an inflatable-slide, and going on to discuss Howard Dean, Anthony Weiner, and Canadian independent politician, Helena Guergis. But it’s reasonably clear to conclude that Ms.Weiss had her American ducks in a row up before doing a google search on “tantrum”, resulting in the infamous “Charlottetown airport incident.”

Here is what Ms.Weiss came up with:

And I’m certainly not talking about the outbursts we’ve all seen from entitled air travelers. It’s a good thing Slater never met Helena Guergis, the Canadian MP who arrived late for a flight on Prince Edward Island last February, refused to take off her boots, swore at airport workers, and loudly referred to the security line as “this hellhole.’’

If only she had channeled her rage into something more productive; there must be something to rant about in the whole of Canadian government. But these days, politics is one of the rarer places to see people lose their cool. Outbursts, such as they are, tend to be scripted, calculated, and preplanned, with lines carefully vetted to make certain they don’t overly offend.

Google never forgets, but that doesn’t mean it’s telling the truth. Can you blame people for getting it wrong though? The Canadian media was all too happy to trot out hearsay evidence that Ms.Guergis’ “tantrum” was among the worst that one airport worker had ever seen.

The Toronto Star splashed it across its pages: “Cabinet minister throws airport tantrum.” This, from the same paper that would later indict Ms.Guergis’ husband, Rahim Jaffer, for offences pertaining to shadowy business partners and “busty hookers”, filed in the court of public opinion.

But while the RCMP has cleared the embattled duo of all allegations related to parliamentary impropriety, the Helena Guergis airport “tantrum” continues to exist as fact, when in reality it may have been nothing more than mild annoyance.

As the Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin reported in July, the manufactured scandal that began with an anonymous letter from a Charlottetown airport employee to P.E.I. Liberal MP Wayne Easter, may have been greatly exaggerated.

The Enterprise-Bulletin was granted access to view the airport security footage from the day in question, February 19, and though the video does not contain audio, the visual offers few signs that any “tantrum” took place.

The letter sent to Mr.Easter alleges she refused to remove her footwear, and slammed her boots into a bin when she finally complied. It also alleges that she shouted at her ministerial aide and demanded she retrieve her boots for her. But the security footage tends to contradict those allegations.

According to the Enterprise-Bulletin, Ms.Guergis appears to sit calmly while removing her boots, before placing them carefully in the bin. At no point does she appear angry or rude, or to be yelling at anyone, despite the lack of audio. Though her aide does bring Ms.Guergis’ boots to her, it would seem to be unprompted.

Of the latter allegations of her repeated attempts to get through a locked door while screaming and banging on the soundproof glass, there is no video evidence. All she does admit to of the allegations is to using the term “hellhole”, but she says that was in reference to the security procedures of airports, and not Charlottetown or the tiny provincial island.

Though this information is available on the internet for anybody to find for themselves, it isn’t surprising to see the erroneous version being propagated by the google-indexed archives of the mighty Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, both of whom have yet to do the kind of journalistic diligence of the tiny Collingwood newspaper.

It is difficult, then, to blame Joanna Weiss for misinforming millions of American readers that a Canadian MP, Helena Guergis, threw an epic fit in an airport. We can instead chalk it up to the infotainment that passes for Canadian news.

I have to admit, I chuckled when I read that the Liberals sent a letter to the Prime Minister today inquiring why the former Minister for the Status of Women was unceremoniously dumped from the Conservative caucus. After all, this was the party calling for Stephen Harper to send her packing after an airport worker didn’t take too kindly to her description of Charlottetown’s airport as a “hellhole”.

It was only in March that Wayne Easter did his best impression of “whack-a-mole” during Question Period, rising every day to alternately berate Ms.Guergis or Mr.Blackburn, before the House of Commons got on to the more serious business of smearing the Canadian mission with complicity in war crimes.

The Liberals acknowledge their prior calls to send Helena Guergis packing on numerous occasions. But suddenly the party has become extremely concerned about her dismissal, and demand to know what “serious” and “credible” evidence the government possesses that led to her untimely meeting with the bottom of a bus.

Last week the embattled Member for Simcoe-Grey appeared on the CBC. This week the Liberal Party is going to bat for her? I’m afraid that, barring the Garth Turner two-step across the Commons, her career is headed the way of the Kyoto Protocol.

Do not for a moment think that the Liberal Party feels any genuine sympathy for Helena Guergis. Much like Afghan detainees, this is about the “integrity of the government.” Well, that, and clinging to something they hope will make the government look bad.

It’s true that the Liberals aren’t the only ones in the dark about why Helena Guergis was booted from caucus. While there are plenty of bad optics about the entire case, nothing substantial has surfaced to indicate any serious wrong-doing on her part. Other than the fact that he may have used her office and parliamentary email account, there is nothing linking her to husband Rahim Jaffer’s activities.

The “credible allegations” from a third party source that led to Ms.Guergis’s removal were thought to have come from private investigator Derrick Snowdy, but he cleared her entirely in testimony before a House of Commons committee. Indeed, far from embarrassing Ms.Guergis, the shocker of the hearing occurred when Mr.Snowdy said that Liberal Party President Alfred Apps “drove the getaway car” for Toronto businessman Nazim Gillani by representing him as a lawyer in disputes over questionable business transactions.

The Liberal letter makes reference to statements made by Conservative MP Shelly Glover on CTV yesterday, in which she insisted there will be more information forthcoming soon.

Whatever the situation may be, rest assured that the Liberal Party is on the case to ensure that when the Conservatives remove Cabinet members, it is for a reason that meets with the approval of the Official Opposition.

Photo: CBC

Let’s face it. If you’re doing an interview on the CBC to talk about your political career, it’s probably because it’s already over. Whether that’s fair or not is debatable. I thought that Helena Guergis did quite a good job at trying to explain her side of things, though at times she sounded a little too meek and, dare I use the adjective, “mousy”.

Both sides came to the table with different objectives in the interview, and each tried to hold their own on that front. Ms.Guergis wanted to come across as the sympathetic and maligned victim of a political decision made by the Prime Minister. Peter Mansbridge was looking to provoke either an admission of wrong-doing, or else elicit an emotional response from her.

Late in the interview, it appears he succeeds, as Ms.Guergis turns from the camera and seems to break down. But when she turns to the camera again her eyes are dry. What to believe? I don’t wish to be cynical, or to doubt her sincerity, but people react most strongly to genuine emotion. If she was holding back, perhaps that was a mistake.

There’s definitely something sympathetic about Helena Guergis. Her voice is quiet, almost plaintive, while her body posture is hunched and submissive. She didn’t look defiant — she looked defeated. Was that the message she wanted to get across? That she had been defeated by vile gossip and innuendo and tweets about “busty hookers”?

In my mind, I am inclined to think that she has done nothing unethical with respect to her position as a sitting Member of Parliament, and genuinely feels betrayed by the Conservative Party, who felt they had no choice but to jettison her from the caucus. She alludes to personal problems in her life, and I would have been interested to know whether those problems precipitated the airport incident in Prince Edward Island.

At times, her comments seemed passively petulant:

“I feel as though they’ve thrown the rule books out the window, that they’re not respecting due process at all. I find it very undemocratic.

“I’m hurt by the Prime Minister. I am hurt because I did consider him to be a friend as well, so I find that very hard to deal with.”

What this entire affair comes down to seems to be Ms.Guergis’s inability to cope with the political realities of being embroiled in a scandal which, while she is not directly responsible for, she is very much in the middle of.

“I’m not ready to give up my political career.

“If people in your family make mistakes you don’t turn your back on them,” Guergis said, pausing to fight back tears. “You stick with them and you work through it and I am committed to my marriage.”

I don’t blame her for sticking with her husband. Many people would stick with their significant other, whether they were accused of influence-peddling, or even much worse crimes. I admire the fact that she feels it is her duty to stick by Rahim Jaffer, despite the serious allegations that face him.

But to expect her career to escape unscathed from this is naive. The fact is that she had a choice to make between her husband and her career, and she tried to choose both. But Helena Guergis is a veteran of politics, and no longer some wide-eyed neophyte. Though we might feel sympathy for her predicament, I can’t imagine she didn’t calculate that this is the only way all of this could possibly have gone down.

Photo Credit: David Akin, Canwest News Service

Now that Helena Guergis has taken shelter in the obscurity of the back row in the House of Commons, a place that many a politician has spent years in hiding, the investigation into her alleged impropriety has hit a brick wall. That’s because despite the gnashing of teeth and wailing coming from the opposition, Ethics commissioner Mary Dawson has turned down Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s request to investigate Ms.Guergis.

Stephen Harper did the right thing by inviting the investigation into what appeared to be a potential violation of parliamentary ethics of the recently deposed Cabinet Minister, since an article that ran in the Toronto Star implicated her husband, Rahim Jaffer, in some unsavoury allegations.

But Mary Dawson, who investigates allegations of conflicts of interest for those who hold public office, said that based on the information she has been given, there is no reason to proceed with an inquiry at this time. This isn’t an outright exoneration of the politician, but it does mean that at this time there are no allegations that hold enough credibility to warrant an investigation into suspicions she may have abused the power of her parliamentary access to further the interests of herself or her husband.

Nor will the commissioner follow up on a partisan request to look into Helena Guergis’s purchase of an $880,000 home she acquired in the capital.

The only new information we have seen since the feeding frenzy all began is the statement by Stephen Harper that he had learned of “third party” information that caused him to change his mind about defending Ms.Guergis. The Conservatives have refused to say what this information is, or who it is from, citing the RCMP investigation.

Meanwhile, a friend of the couple who was with Mr.Jaffer on the night of his arrest, Patrick Glemaud, has come out in opposition to the media attacks on the two.

“This has becoming so crazy, they cannot believe something like that. Rahim did not take a penny of taxpayer dollars, Rahim did not make a penny from any of his past connections from the Conservatives.”

Nazim Gallani, the man accused of being at the strip club with Rahim Jaffer and “three busty hookers” in the Toronto Star article, had his lawyer tell the media that nothing untoward was being discussed about Mr.Jaffer’s relationship with the Conservative Party.

Brian Kilgore, lawyer and spokesman for Mr.Gallani, questioned why the Star article mentioned the presence of “busty hookers” on the evening Mr.Jaffer was arrested.

“We know there were women there, but they were not paid escorts, they were not hookers, they were not women of the evening,” Mr.Kilgore said.

Even if they were prostitutes, the Toronto Star has yet to explain why the oddly dated vernacular was used in conjunction with the description of their physical endowments. Since the term wasn’t put in quotations, we can only assume that the writer, Kevin Donovan, invented the term himself. This is inconsistent with the Star’s more usually politically correct designation for prostitutes as “sex-trade workers”, and although they do use the word “hookers” in some articles, this was the first time physical description was included.

Although criminal allegations of Mr.Jaffer and Ms.Guergis are under investigation by the RCMP, and that remains the important focus of this issue, perhaps the ethics of the “busty hookers” term should be similarly investigated from a journalistic standpoint at some time in the near future.

It can be an extremely delicate proposition to make a comparison of a woman to a dog, even in juxtaposition as the Toronto Sun has done here. Although it’s a common enough term for an employee who has lost favour with the boss, the historical implications will inevitably lead one to the “b-word”.

It’s one of the main complaints from feminists about women getting into politics, that they are always viewed through their gender, no matter what their politics might be. We remember how difficult that road was for Belinda Stronach, who arrived in politics with a silver spoon in her mouth and a leadership bid for the new Conservative Party.

Norman Spector, who leads this mornings news with a sarcastic remark about the Sun dog coverr as being a “great moment in journalism”, is the one who last touched off a firestorm involving Belinda Stronach and a female dog. Specifically, he called her a “bitch” in 2006, shortly after she crossed the floor to join the Liberal party.

The former chief of staff for Brian Mulroney refused to apologize at the time for the dog comment:

“I think she’s a bitch. It’s as simple as that. And I think that 90 percent of men would probably say she’s a bitch for the way she’s broken up (retired hockey player) Tie Domi’s home and the way she dumped Peter MacKay. She is a bitch.”

The controversy touched off a long debate about the role of women in politics, as many suggested that attitudes like this explained why they were not attracted to this kind of “dog-eat-dog” environment. Ironically, many Liberal supporters who had formerly castigated Ms.Stronach and made less than favourable remarks pertaining to her credentials, jumped to her defence once it was a Liberal parliamentarian under attack. Norman Spector explained it is a double standard.

“Why is it unacceptable? That’s what I think about her. I think it was much worse – a few years ago – when one of the Liberal members referred to (former Edmonton North MP) Deb Grey as a slab of meat quite frankly. I think that was totally unacceptable. But bitch is a word that I would use to describe someone like Belinda Stronach. It is a word that I use regularly.”

Although it’s true that there seems to be multipartisan disgust with the Toronto Sun dog cover, it raises the question of whether there are two standards for female parliamentarians: one for Liberals and one for Conservatives. With the heat that many of the female Ministers in the Conservative Cabinet like Bev Oda, Leona Aglukkaq, Lisa Raitt, Rona Ambrose, Diane Finley, and others have taken, it’s often wondered aloud if a certain level of sexist hostility is accepted because they’re conservatives.

It isn’t always very overt, but there is a subtle tendency to demand women in the Conservative Party, perhaps because they’re viewed as women who are fair game by virtue of their ideology. Because many conservatives reject socialist and feminist ideals about an inherent socioeconomic gender inequity, conservative women are viewed inherently as being against women’s rights, and as such are fair game to attack for that sense of betrayal.

You see this again and again, particularly in the United States, where populist politician Sarah Palin was openly mocked and sexualized by opponents, using her gender against her qualification for office. When pressed, most people would back down and say it had nothing to do with her gender, but the sexist vitriol spewed on the internet says otherwise.

To argue that a double standard doesn’t exist would be ignoring the obvious. One can only imagine the outrage if the black dog in the picture were juxtaposed to an outgoing Marlene Jennings. There would be riots in the streets. And yet somehow, this passed the editorial board of the Toronto Sun. It certainly makes you wonder about the integrity of the media.

Michael Ignatieff held a scrum with reporters today, in which he described the Helena Guergis resignation as an example of how the government “cannot level with the Canadian people”. He says that it raises the question of the Prime Minister’s judgment for keeping her in cabinet for as long as he did. In the audio, Terry Milewski asks a question of the Liberal leader [after being interrupted by a French reporter] that sets him back on his heels:

The truth is that the CBC reporter is correct, in that Stephen Harper is obliged to keep confidential unproven allegations made in a criminal investigation. After stumbling for a moment, Mr.Ignatieff goes back to the talking point about Rahim Jaffer, which has nothing to do with Terry’s question.

What I find interesting about Terry’s objection is that this was the same reporter who had no problem filing a CBC exclusive on Amir Attaran’s allegations about unproven claims of torture in Afghanistan.

Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press

You didn’t have to be a psychic to know that Status of Women Minister Helena Guergis was going to “offer her resignation” today. Perhaps what was surprising is that not only did Ms.Guergis leave her Cabinet position, but will sit outside of the party caucus as the RCMP investigates “serious allegations” about her conduct. In the end, it’s probably the best thing for the Conservative Party to distance itself from the train wreckage.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper explained the reasons for booting her from the caucus to the press gallery in Ottawa.

“Last night, my office became aware of serious allegations regarding the conduct of the Honourable Helena Guergis. These allegations relate to the conduct of Ms. Guergis and do not involve any other minister, MP, senator or federal government employee.

“I’ve referred the allegations to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner and to the RCMP. Under the circumstances, I will not comment on them further.”

Coming back into the fold is former embattled environment minister Rona Ambrose, who had a tough go of it her first time around as a Cabinet Minister. She will take over the portfolio of Helena Guergis.

The fallout is based partially on a Toronto Star article that ran yesterday in which wild claims of impropriety were made about her husband, Rahim Jaffer, who bragged in an email that he reach into the PMO for his business contacts. This claim has been largely refuted by Conservatives over the past 24 hours.

The opposition has been nothing if not elated over these events, with NDP MP Pat Martin making the hyperbolic comparison to the sponsorship scandal.

The taint spilled over last night onto Helena Guergis when it was revealed that Mr.Jaffer has also used her parliamentary email address for his own personal business. The party also asked him to remove the party logo from his personal website, which up until yesterday had remained intact.

But perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s back is that a review of her election expenses show she tried to write off clothing purchases under the word “career”. Elections Canada limits specific and reasonable expenses to travel, living arrangements, and child care. This is where the ethics argument comes into play, particularly unreasonable coming from a conservative politician who expects taxpayers should foot the bill for her choice of purse.

All of these myriad reasons for booting her from caucus and forcing her to resign notwithstanding, it doesn’t mean that her career is over. The fact is that she had become too hot a political potato to touch, and the stink coming from Rahim Jaffer was getting all over the party. And let’s face it, none of this has anything to do with the Conservative Party.

The Toronto Star article which went viral yesterday, will likely also come under heavy scrutiny, not least for its interesting characterization of sex trade workers as “busty hookers”, a term entirely out of sorts with the usually politically correct newspaper. Because the term wasn’t put in quotation marks, it’s difficult to discern exactly who is characterizing the prostitutes in this way, and whether it’s done for political reasons.

As for Helena Guergis, if she is worthy, she can wait in the shadows like Rona Ambrose or Maxime Bernier, and reemerge at a later date. I’ve noticed that the Conservatives often bring up “prospects” too quickly, and just like a professional sports team, sometimes you have to send them back to the minors for a while. Then again, sometimes you need to cut from the team altogether. How it proceeds from here will be almost entirely up to Ms.Guergis.

UPDATE

Perhaps it isn’t clear from my post, but Rona Ambrose isn’t getting a brand new Cabinet position. She’s already the Minister of Public Works.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Edmonton Sun – Perry Mah

No, that headline doesn’t make sense outside of the Twitterverse. But it could have grave implications for the future of Status of Women Minister Helena Guergis and the relationship she has with her boss, Stephen Harper.

That’s because the Toronto Star dropped a bombshell this morning about former MP Rahim Jaffer, and allegations that the night he was arrested for drunk driving, speeding, and possession of cocaine, he was in a business meeting with Nazim Gillani, four business associates, and three “busty hookers”.

According to the Star article, Rahim Jaffer has used his former connections with the Conservative Party to boast to business connections that he has strong influence inside the PMO. The Prime Minister is livid today, with his office vociferously denying the allegations as “absurd”.

On the night in question, Rahim Jaffer wasn’t drunk, although he was drinking heavily. He apparently has a big reputation as a heavy drinker, even when he was an MP. Cocaine is a notorious inhibitor to alcoholic intoxication.

The media have been all over this story today like feral animals, which means you can expect the opposition will be ravenous when the subject comes up tomorrow in Question Period. The Conservative Party will do all they can to deflect the questions, but there’s only so much you can do after your ship has been hit with an iceberg.

This morning the CBC were quick to note that Rahim Jaffer’s website still contained the Conservative Party logo next to his name, which has since been pulled. This would seem to support the allegations that Mr.Jaffer has been using his former status as an MP in order to sell “insider” status to business contacts. Whether he actually has that insider status is debatable.

It’s time to throw Helena Guergis under a bus of some kind. The taint from the Rahim Jaffer scandal is strong enough that there is no escaping it for the junior Minister. Worse yet, there’s something a little uncomfortable about the fact that her husband appears to be an alcoholic, coke-snorting purveyor of “busty hookers” in strip clubs, and that she hasn’t tried to distance herself from it, or denounce the behaviour, if only for the sake of her career.

I will be very surprised if the Conservatives don’t kick her out of caucus at the very least, although even stronger action might be warranted. Let’s face it: if Rahim Jaffer is telling people that he can get insider access to the Prime Minister, with Helena Guergis being as close to the Prime Minister as she is, it seriously compromises the integrity of the position she holds. The optics alone are mind-blowing.

Hence the fact that currently, the term #bustyhookers is spreading through Twitter like the ILOVEYOU virus. Like the song goes, you have to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, and know when to run. With Jaffer and Guergis, it’s definitely time to throw in the hand as run as far from ground zero as you can possibly get.

Photo: Globe and Mail

As though Helena Guergis needed to give Stephen Harper any more reasons to dump her on her ear, the Minister’s aide has given him an embarrassing new one. The train wreck that has marked the Minister’s political career for the past month and a half has been nothing if not impressive for the political rubberneckers.

First she had a meltdown in a Prince Edward Island airport on her birthday when she missed her flight out in February. That incident led to a tabloid style feeding frenzy in the media that the Liberals took full advantage of. In fact a month after the incident, local Liberal MP Wayne Easter was still asking questions about it in the House of Commons.

Then there was the plea agreement for her husband Rahim Jaffer earlier this month. While the actions of one’s spouse certainly should not necessarily taint the other, it most certainly brought some unwanted negative attention to the Conservative couple, notably because Mr.Jaffer was a former Conservative MP in Alberta. Mr.Jaffer was caught speeding while under the influence of alcohol and in possession of cocaine in Palgrave, Ontario, on September 11, 2009.

The former MP received a fine of $500, while the judge reportedly said to him “I’m sure you can recognize a break when you see one.” The sentence spurred on a national outrage that dragged in Public Safety Minister Vic Toews in responding to Liberal MP Anita Neville’s question in the House of Commons as to whether the government approved of such a lenient sentence.

Today there’s fresh embarrassment for the Status of Women Minister, as her office assistant has admitted sending letters to local newspapers defending her boss.

The Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin reported today that the Minister’s constituency assistant, Jessica Craven, admitted to writing letters to newspapers that were supportive of Helena Guergis. She had signed the letters “Jessica Morgan,” which is Ms. Craven’s married name.

Jessica Craven apologized today, saying that it was inappropriate, but she will not lose her job. It’s more embarrassing for Helena Guergis still, because her husband Rahim Jaffer had to apologize when he was a Conservative MP for allowing an aide to impersonate him during a Vancouver radio interview.

The Liberals were all over this today, with the usual suspect MP Wayne Easter leading the charge. He said it was “unfathomable” that Ms.Guergis didn’t know that her assistant had sent the letters out, and is accusing the Minister of lying.

This is reminiscent of the bad press that Lisa Raitt went through in 2009 when she was the Minister for Natural Resources. Her aide, Jasime MacDonnell, twice embarrassed her boss with huge gaffes. The first involved leaving a folder of confidential and secret ministerial briefing documents at the CTV News Ottawa office for a week. CTV eventually chose to reveal the contents of the folder when nobody bothered to show up to collect it.

The second mistake involved a digital audio recording involving Lisa Raitt that Jasmine Macdonnell had apparently left in the Ottawa press gallery. The Chronicle Herald released the contents to the public in which Ms.Raitt described the radio isotope shortage as “sexy”, possibly earning her demotion to the Ministry of Labour in January.

Though Helena Guergis has been a bit of a thorny issue of late, Stephen Harper has proven to be extremely loyal to those whom he believes has acted with loyalty to the party. I would expect that Ms.Guergis will be reassigned in the next cabinet shuffle, but that like a Rona Ambrose or a Lisa Raitt or a Maxime Bernier, she’ll be put in the background for a while, and reevaluated once the heat subsides.

Photo: MP Helena Guergis is questioned by reporters, September 17, 2009. Pawel Dwulit / The Canadian Press.

This is too much, even for unabashed partisan Liberals, to handle. Are we now expected to go on a 24-hour Helena Guergis rage watch, just over one incident? It has been 11 days since the Minister for the Status of Women flew into a rage at Prince Edward Island airport. Stay tuned for breaking news and mounting casualties.

I mean, really, what could be more pointless? It has now been 14 years since former Prime Minister Jean Chretien put his mittens around a protesters neck and began choking the life out of him. You don’t see the news reporting stories like this:

“Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien was at a Liberal fundraiser today to give a speech meant to rally the party around Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. Mr.Chretien managed to get through the entire speech without once choking anyone from the audience.”

But if the Ottawa Citizen is guilty of flogging a dead horse, the Liberals are just as ready with the whip. In the CBC today, the Liberal party has announced its intention to call for a “formal investigation” into the temper tantrum thrown by Ms.Guergis on February 19. Sadly, I’m not making this up.

The Liberals are so interested to get to the bottom of the airport rage incident, they have filed an Access to Information request to acquire copies of the security video. For what purpose, or how it pertains to the job of holding the Conservative government to account on its record, is a complete mystery.

The Liberal critic for the Status of Women, Anita Neville, said Ms.Guergis could have violated Canadian aviation regulations with her argumentative and belligerent behaviour that could have put passenger safety at risk.

Boy, if that isn’t stretching the fabric of truth to the physical limitations of science, I don’t know what is.

There’s no question that the minister acted inappropriately, and that she caused embarrassment to herself and to her party. But to say that she violated “aviation regulations” and put passengers at risk is more than just a little over the top. It’s like asking someone to step down from their job because they got angry and argued with a policeman for issuing them a speeding ticket.

You would think with the current Liberal agenda of changing the rules of prorogation and getting the detainee committee back together, that a personal outburst in an airport would rank fairly low on the priority list. But as this party has demonstrated with “Wafergate”, the aboriginal body bag incident, and of course bathroom breaks during G8 photo-ops, there’s nothing too insignificant for the Liberal Party to demand an investigation for.

Now, if Stephen Harper really believes that the incident has damaged the reputation of the office for the Status of Women to the extent that Helena Guergis needs to be removed, I’m sure that will take place in the next cabinet rotation. Or better yet, they could save $25 million and axe the whole ministry in the name of balancing the books. But all a formal investigation is likely to prove is that Helena Guergis is a human being, and like all human beings, not immune to making mistakes.