MacKay gets taste of life in the shadows

[CHIMO]

OTTAWA—Peter MacKay was once Canada’s star contender to lead the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance of Western nations.

He will again head to the NATO summit in Lisbon later this week, but the chastened reality for the defence minister was on display for all to see Monday. He was the one sitting in the shadow of Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon.

As Cannon deflected repeated questions on the role Canada’s soldiers will play in a new Afghan training mission from 2011 to 2014, MacKay — reportedly in talks with a Bay Street law firm — poked away at his BlackBerry and shuffled through papers, his trusty Question Period briefing book closed all the while.

Sources say that MacKay, whose experience on the Afghanistan file is unmatched around the Tory cabinet table, was purposely cut out of talks on the new military role from the beginning by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/891297--mackay-gets-taste-of-life-in-the-shadows?bn=1

So who is next?

Well who could replace Harper? A former PCer or a former Reformer?