There are more than 500 staff in Stephen Harper's sprawling Prime Minister's Office, about 100 more than when he took office in 2006.
It's clearly a big job and getting bigger all the time.
The so-called short-pants people have to deliver no-comments to the media, plan Harper tours with just the right true-blue backdrops, select the most worthy partisans for appointments, produce slick videos of their boss on the job, and pick which MPs can speak and the ones to gag.
Now, apparently, they're in the refugee selection business.
As CTV reported last night, fleshed out with details in The Globe and Mail, the most urgent refugee files were sent to the Prime Minister's Office for a security audit.
Except it wasn't just for security.
It was reportedly a checkup for cultural compatibility, language skills, business acumen and, most damning of all, to specifically discourage applications from Sunni and Shia Muslims.
I checked with former PMO officials and they've never heard of such intense micromanaging before.
If, as our immigration expert points out, this was the case of the PMO acting on foreign intelligence to triple-check the background of specific refugee claims, two thumbs up.
Ditto if it was to ensure the most persecuted were pushed to the front of the line for entry into Canada.
But that doesn't appear to the case. This smacks of political interference in a process where partisan considerations should never come into play.
Canada's immigration department is staffed by those with the expertise to approve the most afflicted and deny the most dangerous.
To vote non-confidence in their abilities and then set out to cherrypick refugee desireables is beyond the scope of any elected function.
Let the PMO stick to its mandate, which has morphed into being a silo of secrecy and silence with a single-minded purpose to maximize Conservative advantages.
Deciding who lives here and who stays behind to face death in the worst places on Earth is not part of any Prime Minister's job description.
That's the Last Word.
