Literature is full of stories of worthy people abandoning their ideals for some unworthy ambition, usually to do with power, money or sex, or sometimes all three together.

These tales are compelling because there are so many real-life examples to underscore their veracity. Some are obvious, others are more subtle, particularly in politics.

Which brings us to Tony Clement, the embattled minister of industry in the Harper government. Clement is a seemingly able, ultra-ambitious politician, a former leadership candidate for the Ontario Progressive Conservative party and the federal Conservative party.

Industry Minister Tony Clement answers questions from the media outside the House of Commons in July 2010. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

In a post-Stephen Harper leadership race, he would be considered a credible candidate again.

But now Clement is caught in a whopper so egregious that one of the country's most respected civil servants has sacrificed his own career rather than go along with the minister's version of events.

That public servant is Munir Sheikh, who, until now, was the head of Statistics Canada, the non-partisan agency that collects and analyzes all kinds of important national data, including the census.

Sheikh resigned after Clement suggested that the agency head agreed that there would be no impact in changing the way census information is collected. Sheikh said that wasn't the case at all.

Long forms

At issue is whether the government's plan to eliminate the mandatory "long-form" census document, replacing it with a voluntary version that doesn't have to be answered, compromises the integrity of the census and the quality of the information it collects.

I am not statistician. But people who make statistics their career, not to mention almost everyone from the business community, provincial governments, universities and others who use the data, say the changes are the absolute wrong way to go.

And by quitting his post the way he has, Sheikh has underscored just how disingenuous the Harper government has been with its census changing plans.

Since everything in this government emanates from the prime minister's office, there is little doubt where this ideologically driven idea for census change came from.

But as Statistics Canada reports to the minister of industry, almost all the messy fallout is landing at the feet of Tony Clement or, perhaps soon, on his head.

Deja vu

Why Clement doesn't seem to mind all this fuss is hard to fathom.

Only a blind partisan would think that his version of events could trump that of a respected civil servant who is throwing over his career for no obvious benefit.

Of course, we have seen all of the elements of this situation before in the past four years of the Harper government. And Clement has now been caught up in two of them.

Last October, the CRTC ruled that a company called Globalive was ineligible to set up a cellphone operation in Canada, even though it had bid successfully in the government auction for spectrum space.

The reason was that its majority shareholder is an Egyptian company and the law says telephone companies must be majority Canadian owned.

But the federal cabinet has the power to overrule CRTC decisions and that was what happened.

There was Industry Minister Clement announcing that the Egyptian-owned company would be allowed to start its business, with no changes required to its ownership structure.

You could hear the laughter when he announced that the CRTC decision had been "adjusted," when in fact it had been completely overturned.

The government had, in at least that one case, changed the foreign ownership law without bothering to go to Parliament and dismissed the decision of an independent government agency, albeit one to which it had appointed many of the commissioners, including the chairman.

Up and down

Clement was made to look foolish that day and he is being made to look foolish again.

But he seems not to mind. He is a lawyer by training, but a career politician by vocation.

He became president of the Ontario PC party in 1990, as then New Democrat Bob Rae was forming the government and when it was not a great time to be a Tory in Ontario.

But five years later, things had changed and, for his hard slogging, Clement was elected to the Ontario legislature when Conservative leader Mike Harris came to power.

By 1997, Clement was in the cabinet, graduating to become health minister in 2001.

That was when he came to national attention, gaining plaudits for his and the government's handling of the SARS outbreak in Toronto in 2003.

But the political winds were blowing for change in Ontario in 2003 and Clement was swept out of office. That was when he made a pivot and jumped into federal politics.

Clement became the third person in the race for the newly formed Conservative party and that is where he finished, behind winner Stephen Harper and runner-up Belinda Stronach.

Sadly, for him, that wasn't the end of his losing streak. In the 2004 federal election he ran in his political home of Brampton, just west of Toronto, and was soundly beaten.

In 2006, he shifted his political base to central Ontario and the riding of Parry Sound Muskoka, where, in one of the closest races in the country — and after a recount — he was narrowly elected and went into the Harper cabinet as the federal minister of health.

He shifted to the industry portfolio in 2008 and, clearly, he wants to stay in politics and will likely be a leadership candidate again. After all, the Conservatives can't have leaders in perpetuity from Alberta, even if that is where most of their talented ministers come from.

By contrast, Clement hails from "vote-rich" Ontario, which is clearly an advantage. But there will be no campaign possible if Clement continues to follow orders and live in some make-believe world that apparently makes sense only to those who inhabit it.

Yes, politics is full of compromises. People make adjustments, pour water in their wine and go along to get along.

But most people have a bottom line. A hill they are prepared to die on.

Munir Sheikh had such a hill. So far, Tony Clement seems to be living on the Prairies.