Barrel Strength

the lovely and intelligent Great Canadian™, Jennifer Lynch, QC. After all, if one is seeking out political hacks without the skills to make it in truly merit-based jobs, we’ve hit the motherlode with this one.

This is the former chief of staff to Joe Clark, in his last fling at failing as PC Party Leader, who in a matter of months:

• chided staffers for not keeping up a “professional” profile since the Clark PCs were, in her words, “the government-in-waiting”
• purchased a $1000 Royal Doulton coffee service with the office funds of the smallest parliamentary caucus, because a “former Prime Minister needs to entertain guests in an appropriate fashion.”
• appropriated a high-speed network laser printer as her personal desktop printer, leaving a whole research unit without ready access to their written output.
• demonstrated her self-proclaimed skills as “a respected Alternative Dispute Resolution practitioner, with particular expertise in mediation and the facilitation of complex group processes” by allowing her office to deteriorate into outright mutiny, seeing six senior staffers resign within six weeks.

Update

The typical ethical slip is to pad a resume but it looks like Lynch’s is markedly economical with the truth:

Ms. Lynch has served as chief executive officer in both the private and public sectors: leading the international consultancy PDG People Development Global Inc. from 1998 until her appointment as Chief Commissioner;

But what of her half-year as ringmaster to the Clark circus? I guess she was sort of a CEO from December 1998 to July 1999… in an Enron kind of way.