Random Access

Wow. Every single Mississauga MPP elected Oct. 10 is either a Cabinet Minister or a Parliamentary Secretary, including the successful candidate in the riding that time forgot, Mississauga-Brampton South.
Amrit Mangat is the new Parliamentary Assistant to the Seniors’ Secretariat. The hand-picked, hand-appointed candidate is obviously a poster child for the Liberals pledge to do better in representing minority and female communities. From the street to the ante-room of the Cabinet in a scant few months. It is still the mystery riding in some ways, isn’t it?
Mangat’s appointment is more surprising in a way than any of the others in that, like her candidacy, it comes out of nowhere.
Harinder Takhar treads water in Entrepreneurship and Small Business while Peter Fonseca — a circumspect guy who could be labelled “least likely to ever get in hot water for thinking before speaking” — gets a chance in the safe little backwater portfolio of Tourism and Recreation.
Bob Delaney gets to be PA to the Premier in Research and Innovation which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you do. Since the Premier has other fish to fry, it should give a good chance for “enterprise” anyway. Maybe Bob can concentrate on his favourite subject, researching how to get an innovative guy like him inside the Cabinet doors.
The promising Charles Sousa gets rewarded for dispatching Tim Peterson with the PA’s role in Government and Consumer Services while Dr. Kuldip Kular, who keeps busy with a part-time medical practice can get first-hand policy advice at the same time, from Health Care Minister George Smitherman.
By the way, if anyone has a description of a Parliamentary Assistant’s job, please forward to the neophyte PAs asap.
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Wonderful Port Credit jazz singer Carol McCartney who released her first CD A Night in Tunisia under her own name earlier this year, has a chart topper.
The vibrant singer, a favourite of fellow musicians, is number 1 on the Jazz/Blues charts put together at Chart Attack www.chartattack.com/charts/specialty/jazz/
“It’s thrilling,” says the veteran singer. “It really is. You send all these things out to these mysterious addresses and you hope somebody is going to receive them and play them.” She credits Sonja Tran, the partner of saxophonist Bob Brough with whom she recorded a fine earlier CD, Like A Spring Day, for much of the leg work. Tran called station managers on McCartney’s behalf, and prepped them for the release.
Don’t look now, but there’s another Mississaugan on the list too. That’s drummer Jay Boehmer whose new work Autumn Afternoon, his first in nine years which features the sensational Pat LaBarbera on sax, sits at number 7.
McCartney’s CD also stood at the top of the Earshot charts earlier.
By the way, the newxt couple of Thursday swill be Mississauga days (unofficially) at Jazz.FM91 which is in the middle of Begging Weeks — the necessary but nonetheless tortuous semi-annual appeal for funds to support the station’s sound work.
Mississauga’s own Terry McElligott, who hosts Mid-Day Jazz on the station, will have the City’s first couple of jazz, pianist Nancy Walker and bassist Kieran Overs on his show Nov. 8 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Thursday. McCartney joins Larry Green this Thursday from 4-7 p.m.