Searching for Bev Oda by Lawrence Martin
Source : Globe & Mail
The Heritage Minister has been so low-profile and had so little effect, she might as well not exist
December 23, 2006
There's Rona and there's Oda and they have much in common. They're the only two prominent women in the Stephen Harper cabinet and they have both fallen from favour.
Everyone's heard of Rona, as in Ambrose, the environment minister who has been listing in the portfolio and is soon to be cast away.
But her adversity has been mirrored in good part in the case of Heritage Minister Beverley Oda. She might just as well not exist, so trifling has been her impact.
"She's been completely under the radar on every issue," says Charlie Angus, the NDP's culture critic. "She's had two priorities. One was the mandate review for the CBC. The other was copyright legislation. We've seen neither."
The country, says Ian Morrison, head of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, has rarely seen such a quiet culture minister. "I can't think of anything significant that she's done. It's the Rona Ambrose factor. She's being run out of the Prime Minister's Office."
As the theory goes, the PMO didn't know what it wanted on environment or on culture, with the result that the two women have ended up walking the plank.
Oda, who came to the position with an extensive background in broadcasting, is viewed as sincere and well-meaning, but either unwilling or unable to stake out ground. A long-time friend of hers says that the result is dismaying for the cultural community. "The broadcast boys, the film producers, those in the arts are remarkably disappointed." He said she suffers from a lack of experience in politics, a weak staff and indecisiveness.
Power has been dragged out from under her. In the House of Commons, the Prime Minister has sometimes signalled Treasury Board Secretary John Baird to take questions for her. It is Baird, the former hard-line Conservative in Mike Harris's Ontario government, who is calling the shots on what she spends. In seeking funding for a major cultural event for Toronto called Luminato, organizers are being told to bypass the culture minister and go to Baird.
Oda's portfolio includes status of women, but 12 of 16 status-of-women offices have been shut down. Key decisions affecting the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission have been taken not by Oda but by Industry Minister Maxime Bernier. The National Capital Commission has been moved out from under her department's jurisdiction. Cuts to culture have not been Draconian, but among others the Aboriginal Languages Initiative program has been chopped and Canadian museums have taken a big hit.
A major embarrassment came for Oda, the first Japanese Canadian to be elected (in 2004) to the federal Parliament, last month when she had to cancel a fundraising dinner because its host was Charlotte Bell, a lobbyist for CanWest Global on regulatory affairs. The conflict of interest was obvious and Angus raised it in the House. "Immediately her line," he recalled, "was that she wasn't breaking any laws. But John Baird immediately jumped in and said we're not going to have big money running politics, and the next day her fundraiser was cancelled."
Another setback was the CBC mandate review. Oda had pushed for such a review while on the Heritage committee in opposition. She was supposed to announce it in the summer, but at the last minute backed off because she was unable to get the backing of the PMO. Now the all-party Heritage committee has decided, in the absence of action by her, to go ahead with its own review of the CBC, beginning next month.
Industry insiders are puzzled as to where Oda stands on the future of the network. She's been inscrutable. She steered clear of the uproar over the CBC's decision to bump the national newscast by an hour to make room for a U.S. reality-TV show, which bombed. Some felt that in the election campaign she dissuaded Stephen Harper from taking a hard line, as Conservatives are sometimes wont to do, against the public broadcaster. But she is also on record as saying that if the CBC is going to provide services that are very similar to the commercial broadcasters, then people have a right to question why public funds are being used for those services.
The NDP has rated Oda as one of the three worst cabinet ministers, the other two being Ambrose and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor.
With a cabinet shuffle likely coming over the holidays, many are betting that she will get the hook and be replaced by perhaps a Quebec-based minister. Others doubt it, however, because unlike on the environment, where the government wants to take a new direction, the Harperites, in this their first term, have no big plans for culture.
In such a scenario, why not stick with an idling minister?
© Globe and Mail
Everyone's heard of Rona, as in Ambrose, the environment minister who has been listing in the portfolio and is soon to be cast away.
But her adversity has been mirrored in good part in the case of Heritage Minister Beverley Oda. She might just as well not exist, so trifling has been her impact.
"She's been completely under the radar on every issue," says Charlie Angus, the NDP's culture critic. "She's had two priorities. One was the mandate review for the CBC. The other was copyright legislation. We've seen neither."
The country, says Ian Morrison, head of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, has rarely seen such a quiet culture minister. "I can't think of anything significant that she's done. It's the Rona Ambrose factor. She's being run out of the Prime Minister's Office."
As the theory goes, the PMO didn't know what it wanted on environment or on culture, with the result that the two women have ended up walking the plank.
Oda, who came to the position with an extensive background in broadcasting, is viewed as sincere and well-meaning, but either unwilling or unable to stake out ground. A long-time friend of hers says that the result is dismaying for the cultural community. "The broadcast boys, the film producers, those in the arts are remarkably disappointed." He said she suffers from a lack of experience in politics, a weak staff and indecisiveness.
Power has been dragged out from under her. In the House of Commons, the Prime Minister has sometimes signalled Treasury Board Secretary John Baird to take questions for her. It is Baird, the former hard-line Conservative in Mike Harris's Ontario government, who is calling the shots on what she spends. In seeking funding for a major cultural event for Toronto called Luminato, organizers are being told to bypass the culture minister and go to Baird.
Oda's portfolio includes status of women, but 12 of 16 status-of-women offices have been shut down. Key decisions affecting the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission have been taken not by Oda but by Industry Minister Maxime Bernier. The National Capital Commission has been moved out from under her department's jurisdiction. Cuts to culture have not been Draconian, but among others the Aboriginal Languages Initiative program has been chopped and Canadian museums have taken a big hit.
A major embarrassment came for Oda, the first Japanese Canadian to be elected (in 2004) to the federal Parliament, last month when she had to cancel a fundraising dinner because its host was Charlotte Bell, a lobbyist for CanWest Global on regulatory affairs. The conflict of interest was obvious and Angus raised it in the House. "Immediately her line," he recalled, "was that she wasn't breaking any laws. But John Baird immediately jumped in and said we're not going to have big money running politics, and the next day her fundraiser was cancelled."
Another setback was the CBC mandate review. Oda had pushed for such a review while on the Heritage committee in opposition. She was supposed to announce it in the summer, but at the last minute backed off because she was unable to get the backing of the PMO. Now the all-party Heritage committee has decided, in the absence of action by her, to go ahead with its own review of the CBC, beginning next month.
Industry insiders are puzzled as to where Oda stands on the future of the network. She's been inscrutable. She steered clear of the uproar over the CBC's decision to bump the national newscast by an hour to make room for a U.S. reality-TV show, which bombed. Some felt that in the election campaign she dissuaded Stephen Harper from taking a hard line, as Conservatives are sometimes wont to do, against the public broadcaster. But she is also on record as saying that if the CBC is going to provide services that are very similar to the commercial broadcasters, then people have a right to question why public funds are being used for those services.
The NDP has rated Oda as one of the three worst cabinet ministers, the other two being Ambrose and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor.
With a cabinet shuffle likely coming over the holidays, many are betting that she will get the hook and be replaced by perhaps a Quebec-based minister. Others doubt it, however, because unlike on the environment, where the government wants to take a new direction, the Harperites, in this their first term, have no big plans for culture.
In such a scenario, why not stick with an idling minister?
© Globe and Mail
