� Media Event of the Day - August 13 | Home | Controversy spoils Opening Ceremony for Greeks �
August 13, 2004
From the rumour mill...
With the rumoured late summer Cabinet Shuffle beginning to look unlikely, new rumours are filling the gap at Queen's Park. The latest surrounds the communications branch at Ontario's Ministry of Health.
Over the winter, that branch's top three civil servants left for greener pastures. Their departures coincided with rumblings of public service dissatisfaction with their new Minister, George Smitherman. As the story goes, public servants were not able to get basic approvals from the Minister because he was seldom in his Queen's Park Office. In the Minister's political office, his first communications advisor quit within weeks of being hired.
All of this painted a not-so-flattering picture of the new Minister, but the latest rumour may be worse.
Apparently, close to a dozen public servants have quit the Ministry's communication branch in the last two weeks alone. The rumour is they are leaving, in part, because the Minister (or his political staff) is overly difficult to deal with.
Worse for the McGuinty Liberals is these departures come on the eve of the First Minister's Meeting on Health Care - a time when the Ministry's communications branch will be called upon to provide considerable support to the Premier as well as the Minister.
If the rumour is correct (a big 'if'), then this is an unprecedented situation. I cannot recall any other Minister facing such massive civil service resignations. It all looks very bad for Mr. Smitherman.
Posted by maxthecat on August 13, 2004 at 11:14 AM
| Printer-friendly version
Filed in: Politics / Ontario
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.maxsmewsings.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/98
