Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Tony, Tony, Tony...

I don't know about you, but I for one am getting tired of our government's ministers embarrassing us abroad.

The latest Harper minion to trip over his own shoelaces on the world stage is Tony Clement. Seems our Health Minister spoke at the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico yesterday and used the opportunity to once again slam safe injection sites like Vancouver's Insite, even calling the policy "a form of harm addition".

Oops.

While the minister's views on Insite are well known, Mr. Clement repeated them Tuesday at an event where he was endorsing and promoting a new WHO “how-to” guide on battling the epidemic, which promotes needle exchange and safe injection sites. The Health Minister's comments left officials from the agency flummoxed and red-faced.

Teguest Guerma, associate director of the HIV-AIDS department at the WHO, who was clearly uncomfortable about the exchange between the minister and reporters about the apparent contradiction in Canada's position, would only say: “The WHO supports harm reduction.”


Canada's Not-So-New Government: Making Us All Look Like Idiots Since 2006.

(H/T to Rolling Back the Tide of Extremism)

4 comments:

  1. Love the last line, and the fabulous photo . . . .

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  2. Remind me to tell you my husband's hilarious 'Tony Clement in High School' story someday...

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  3. Oh, that's right, I forgot - I already did!

    Never mind.

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  4. I don't support the safe injection sites, but Tony should really figure out what side his shoelaces are tied on.

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