Wikileaks is sooo 2010.  It almost proves how 2010 that Wikileaks has become that Geist gets his skirts all a flutter over a couple cables involving–Tony Clement, the former Canadian Minster of Industry.

That should be a name familiar to Geist–because while Minister of Industry, Clement signed many a check for Geist’s various consulting gigs for Industry Canada (OK, maybe he didn’t actually sign the checks, but his team surely must have approved the payments).  And in the new majority government in Canada, Clement is no longer Minister of Industry and is now President of the Treasury Board of Canada.

Why is that relevant?  If I read the Canadian law correctly, the Treasury Board of Canada issues regulations about how the public’s money is to be spent on…consultants.  If you get $25,000 or more (or a series of contracts), then that contract has to be “tendered” or bascically made available for a public “RFP” type process.  Kind of like Geist’s contracts for Industry Canada.  This is a big deal in Canada, because the reason that the Treasury Board has rules about these things is because there were some abuses in the past that required special attention, so to speak.

So you have to ask yourself this.  Is Geist really such a Pollyanna that he’s genuinely shocked that trading partners talk to each other and try to help each other solve their problems (which is essentially what was in the Wikileaks cables)?  Or is he trying to poke Clement in the eye because…why?  Maybe because Clement cut him off the public dole?  There has got to be more to it than just finding a couple cables a year or so into the Wikileaks saga and sqeaking about it.

Somebody should hope their skirts are nice and clean.