Sooner or later, this happens to any politician with a penchant for, ah, spontaneity.
Picture it: you’re in a corner, defending the indefensible. The media attack dogs (such as they are on CTV’s Question Period) are snapping at you, and you’ve just used up your last briefing note factoid.
Your hippocampus and cerebellum are screaming at each other — “I need more facts now, mister!” “Captain, she’s nae got na murr ta give!” — when suddenly, one last golden nugget comes rolling down the memory chute.
Riiight… $13 million. Some Ernst and Young audit. You can’t remember where you heard it, but dammit, it sounds good right now.
So out it comes: “This number of $100-million is beginning to shrink rather substantially…. As they’ve gone through it, and they’re not finished yet, I’m told that the number in question has fallen to about $13-million.”
And you go home, settle onto the sofa for a well-earned Easter Sunday nap, and suddenly you remember where you got that fact. And you sit bolt upright, suddenly drenched in sweat, because you got it from Dennis Mills.
Omigod, omigod, omigod. Dennis Mills. Jesus, he wouldn’t have just made it up… right? No — there had to be an audit. It had to be true. He wouldn’t have just pulled that factoid out of whatever orifice produced his waterfront plan and bringing the UN to Toronto, would he?
And the answer comes back to you: of course he would. This is the guy who’s already leaked sealed testimony and describes the man at the centre of the scandal as a “warrior for Canada when we nearly lost the country and who makes the claim that he didn’t break any rules, but that he bent some rules at a very difficult time.“
From such little things are ruined weekends made.
