DFAIT a Pain in the Posterior?

Lorne Gunter, NP, May 18 wrote:

Moving John Baird to Foreign Affairs means, more than anything, that Mr. Harper sees that department as a pain in the posterior. Mr. Baird is a fixer. Wherever there is trouble in government, he goes in to root out the deadwood and turn the department around to the government’s way of thinking. He did this for Mike Harris when he was part of the Ontario Tory government in the 1990s and he has done it since 2006 for Mr. Harper. Does his appointment signal a foreign policy shift for Canada? Probably not. Rather, it likely means that troublesome diplomats and bureaucrats who have obstructed the government’s initiatives for the past five years will soon find themselves in charge of federal office supplies north of the Arctic Circle.