Don Martin: The stunning fall of the once-promising Marco Mendicino

He was a nice guy, that Marco Mendicino.

The public safety minister is a bright and articulate former federal prosecutor who was determined and perhaps destined to be a rising star in the Justin Trudeau cabinet.

During my days as host of CTV’s Power Play, he asked me for advice on how to improve his excessively partisan appearances on the show’s MP panels. My suggestion was simple: More friendly Marco, less scripted PMO.

He clearly didn’t listen.

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Recent antics underline what is becoming a stunning fall from grace for Mendicino as he stumbles and bumbles badly from issue to hot-button issue after just 18 months on the job.

Two-year-old revelations from Canada’s spy agency surfaced Monday which found that respected Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family in Hong Kong had endured Chinese state intimidation after his vote to condemn that country’s atrocious human rights record.

• Conservative MP says feds did not brief him on alleged threats to his family in China

After noting he was never informed of the threats until Monday and quoting a directive ordering CSIS to immediately alert the public safety minister to matters of interest, Chong asked the obvious question Tuesday: When was the minister made aware of this threat to his family?

It was a plea for information from someone with a great deal of personal skin in the answer.

But tone-deaf Mendicino ducked, donned his empty empathy mask to declare "solidarity" with Chong and delivered a patronizing vow to "work with him and all parliamentarians to make sure that he and all parliamentarians get the support they need."

Whatever that means.

This refusal to answer the what-they-knew and when-they-knew-it question was repeated more than a dozen times Tuesday with Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and NDP MPs lining up as one to demand a clear response while, tellingly, the cheerleading Liberal MPs surrounding Mendicino mostly sat on their hands.

Then came Wednesday. Suddenly the entire Chong script changed.

After days of ignoring specific questions, the prime minister and Mendicino emerged to declare they learned about it on Monday.

Something is clearly amiss here.

• CSIS must inform MPs about all threats against them, no matter how credible: Trudeau

If the head of CSIS doesn’t think alerting the threatened MP, the prime minister, his chief of staff or the minister responsible that an MP is facing Chinese retaliation for a vote in the House of Commons, well, it’s time for a new CSIS leadership.

Conversely, if the public safety minister wouldn’t reveal his ignorance about the threat until this week, which was the ONLY question he was asked by Conservatives on Tuesday, well, perhaps it’s time for change there, too.

This ministerial dodge wasn’t the usual bovine-enhanced fertilizer that’s spread with gusto around farmer fields and in the Commons every spring.

MPs usually unite across party lines when one of their own colleagues is under siege, particularly on a family issue and especially when it’s a threat from a foreign superpower.

When the voting rights of parliamentarians face an attempted string-pulling from hostile forces beyond the precinct, MPs have the unfiltered right to get the truth without the usual political fudgery.

But Mendicino was all about fudging all week.

Under siege for the third straight day, he refused to reveal if other MPS are under the same threat or confirm whether the allegation had been relayed beyond CSIS, even though agency officials and a former director said it would be standard operating procedure to alert the responsible ministries.

Mendicino’s poor handling of this incendiary issue was just another hit on the soundtrack of his very bad year.

He was forced into a pride-swallow Tuesday by diluting his original assault-style firearms ban.

The new ban will only prohibit weapons manufactured in the future or those not even invented yet -- a jaw-dropping retreat for a minister who said banishing all these guns was essential to public safety just last year.

He recently declared that Chinese police stations in Canada had been closed by the RCMP, when they were not.

A two-year-old promise to set up a foreign agent registry in Canada, similar to what exists in the U.S. and other countries, has been spun off by Mendicino for pointless consultations without an end date.

His planned changes to allow crucial humanitarian assistance to flow into Afghanistan, where groups are holding back aid out of fear they’ll run afoul of Canada’s anti-terrorism laws, are moving forward in glacial slow-motion.

And lest we forget the notorious fib when he insisted police forces advised the government to invoke the Emergencies Act against the Ottawa convoy protest, a statement police deny.

There are many other missteps going back to the botched Afghanistan withdrawal when he was immigration minister, but space limits the list.

It’s obviously too late to advise him on ways to avoid becoming an ego-inflated cabinet supernova. He’s already there and starting to go dark.

Sadly, Marco Mendicino’s once-bright future as a credible cabinet influencer has been hobbled by his so-many missteps.

He has clearly got to go.

That’s the bottom line..