Le Principe de Pierre

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's promotion of a senior gun registry bureaucrat has put one of his MPs in a tough spot -- Gary Breitkreuz once blamed the civil servant for huge cost overruns.

"The transition team must have seen something under the hood that I didn't see," the Saskatchewan MP said yesterday of Maryantonett Flumian...

[Breitkreuz] charged that as project leader, [Flumian] had been personally responsible for mistakes with the gun program that ended up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Didn't you feel some kind of responsibility to inform your political masters that this project could never be implemented, that all the firearms in Canada could probably never be registered, that the costs would skyrocket?" Breitkreuz asked her at the time.

I know the Peter Principle is when you promote someone to their level of incompetence. What do you call it when you break through that barrier and kick things to a level beyond?