Everybody loves Gérard

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon's of the opinion that former Quebec MNA Gérard Latulippe will make a fine new president for Rights & Democracy. On the day his name was announced, Cannon's spokesperson seemed confident that the opposition parties would "recognize the exceptional qualifications of Mr. Latulippe."

I'll give them the exceptional part.

No sooner was his name floated than this handy tipsheet, describing all the teams he's played for and some of the scrapes he's gotten himself into, popped up, courtesy of Maclean's columnist Paul Wells.

So far, so interesting. Especially the sovereigntist bit of his track record.

Not to be outdone, Chantal Hébert's blog piled on with another reason Latulippe's so, er, exceptional. Turns out that a man who may soon represent Canada's commitment to human rights and democratic values abroad made some interesting contributions to the reasonable accomodation debate in Quebec a few years ago -- for example, offering that certain kinds of immigration/some of Canada's multicultural communities (but not all, mind you, just the more fundamentalist ones) may threaten Quebec's social cohesion. (The blog is in French, but you're only a Google toolbar away from a reasonable translation if you can't read French.)

So, shall we add "wary of certain ethnic groups" to a list of his "exceptional" qualifications, then?

Speaking to reporters today after the Bloc Québécois caucus meeting on Parliament Hill, Gilles Duceppe added a few more "exceptional" insights into Latulippe's leanings.

Duceppe pointed out that Latulippe (not unlike other Canadian Alliance candidates in his day, to be fair) opposes gay marriage, and supports the death penalty, two human rights issues which run contrary to the current law of the land here in Canada.

Duceppe also suggested that Latulippe's views about how to manage reconstruction after the devastating earthquake in Haiti (apparently he believes that the best way to fix things there is for other governments/bodies just to take the place over, for at least a while) weren't diplomatic, and run counter to the Canadian government's stated intent to respect the sovereignty of the Haitian government in whatever form of assistance is provided.

The federal government is obligated to consult with Parliament, aka the opposition, on Latulippe's appointment, but that doesn't mean that the other parties have a veto, or that Latulippe need be subjected to some kind of confirmation hearing.

Today Duceppe said the Bloc had suggested the names of other possible candidates, many of them Conservative (albeit of the former PC persuasion, such as Joe Clark, Flora MacDonald and Barbara McDougall.) The BQ leader said he believed that Layton and Ignatieff were already determined to oppose Latulippe's candidacy, and if the Bloc wasn't satisfied, they could too. (Coalition alert!)

A close reading of/attempt to parse the Liberal and NDP reaction thus far, including comments by Michael Ignatieff on Monday and Jack Layton today, doesn't make things explicitly clear as to whether the NDP and Liberals are unhappy with Latulippe as the new president per se, or whether they're simply not convinced that a new president is sufficient to address the myriad of troubles now plaguing the agency.

But perhaps that doesn't matter. The knives are out, and being put to good use slicing and dicing every controversial line in Latulippe's biographical notes. More discussion of Latulippe's "exceptional qualifications" is probably destined to play out in (at least) a Parliamentary committee room in the very near future.