7 Times Peter MacKay Showed He Can’t Help But Mess Things Up

Goodnight, sweet prince.

Chris Wattie / Reuters

Justice Minister Peter MacKay is leaving Canadian politics.

The announcement will be made late afternoon Friday in MacKay's home province of Nova Scotia, sources confirmed to BuzzFeed Canada. CBC News was first to report his plan to step down.

MacKay is one of the most prominent faces of the Conservative government and was seen as a potential leadership candidate.

He is one of the longest serving defence ministers of all time. He was for years the most powerful Atlantic Canadian politician. Above all, MacKay was our most consistent source of ridiculous political news stories over the past two decades. Here we look at some of his greatest hits.

1. When Peter MacKay promised not to merge with the Canadian Alliance, then merged with the Canadian Alliance.

Reuters Photographer / Reuters

When running for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in 2003, MacKay famously signed a pact with leadership rival David Orchard to not merge the party with Harper's Canadian Alliance. Orchard's support clinched MacKay's victory.

But things happen. Later that year MacKay agreed to merge the party with the Canadian Alliance and Orchard was cast into the "suckers" file of history.

But it's hard to argue with the results. After a loss in 2004, the new Conservative Party would go on to win three straight elections and counting.

2. When Peter MacKay accidentally implied he had intimate negotiations with Condoleezza Rice.

Paul Darrow / Reuters

In September of 2006 then-U.S. secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Nova Scotia to visit MacKay and stayed at his house. The next day MacKay remarked on how she slept with the window open, sparking the closest thing Canadian politics had to a sex scandal.

So did they or didn't they? Disappointingly, the answer is no, according to Rice's biography released five years later. She called Peter MacKay "a good friend," but said the rumours were "misdirected."

At least the whole ordeal sparked this notorious (and NSFW) Norm MacDonald interview on the Daily Show:

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3. When Peter MacKay was alleged to have called an ex-girlfriend a dog in the House of Commons.

Chris Wattie / Reuters

After MacKay's girlfriend and caucus colleague Belinda Stronach defected to the Liberals in 2005 to keep the Paul Martin government alive, the two went through a very public breakup. MacKay was filmed morosely kicking around with his dog on a family farm.

"My head's clear. My heart's a little banged up but that will heal," he said.

A year later the Conservatives were in power and a Liberal MP heckled MacKay about his dog. According to the Liberals, MacKay said something along the lines "You already have her," while nodding towards Stronach's seat.

Stronach demanded an apology, but MacKay denied he ever said it. Ultimately the Speaker of the House found there was no proof the exchange happened, so there was nothing he could do.

4. When Peter MacKay sent out starkly different Mother's Day and Father's Day messages.

Chris Wattie / Reuters

In what must have seemed like a nice gesture at the time, Peter MacKay's sent out poignant emails to his department on both Mother's and Father's Day.

First, he told moms: “By the time many of you have arrived at the office in the morning, you’ve already changed diapers, packed lunches, run after school buses, dropped kids off at daycare, taken care of an aging loved one and maybe even thought about dinner."

Then when father's day rolled around he praised them for “shaping the minds and futures of the next generation of leaders.”

The difference in tone did not go over well.

5. When Peter MacKay's former staffer got an absurd civil service appointment.

Chris Wattie / Reuters

Friends of politicians getting jobs at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency is nothing new. But the appointment of former MacKay staffer Kevin MacAdam to a six-figure civil service job still managed to raise eyebrows for how curious it was.

For example, MacAdam's job required bilingualism, but the applicants were not required to speak French. Once in the job, he began two years of French-language training near his home in Ottawa, all while making a salary of $130,000 per year.

Ultimately there was an independent investigation and fishy emails showed ACOA executives fixed the appointment so MacAdam would win it.

Four senior ACOA officials were sanctioned, but investigators could find no link to MacKay's office.

6. When Peter MacKay had a search and rescue helicopter pick him up from vacation.

Royal Canadian Air Force

Who needs Uber when you've got the Canadian Coast Guard at your disposal? In September of 2011 it was revealed that the previous year MacKay, then Defence Minister, had a Search and Rescue helicopter pick him up at a private fishing lodge near Gander, Newfoundland. The chopper flew him to the nearest airport so he could make a flight to a funding announcement in Ontario.

MacKay's office claimed this was a demonstration of search and rescue capabilities that had been planned well in advance. But internal emails show staff talked about the flight being done "under the guise" of search and rescue training.

In a weird post-script, it was later revealed that Senator Mike Duffy wrote in his diary that MacKay believed he was set up by one of Stephen Harper's top aides.

7. When Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay turned a routine Supreme Court nomination into a crisis.

Chris Wattie / Reuters

This is more on the prime minister, but as Justice Minister MacKay was a major player. In 2013 Harper appointed federal court judge Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court of Canada. The problem was that Nadon was filling one of three seats specifically set aside for judges from Quebec. Since he was no longer technically a Quebec judge he didn't qualify. Or did he? No one knew.

This lead to an unprecedented public spat between the prime minister and chief Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin, and ultimately the top court ruling Nadon could not sit with them. CBC has this handy timeline of the whole debacle.