Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Yet another Canadian political crisis
After a brief hiatus stirring up revolution in far away places, I’m back in the B.I.R. loop fresh with heaping political turmoil from Canada.
The neat thing about Canada is that we tend not to distract public attention away from our pressing social issues with war and the like; instead we do it with politics. Over the next two weeks to two months the Canadian press will be hi-jacked with a brewing political scandal, and only in a New Zealand-based blog can one have a fighting chance at making sense of the whole thing as it will impact people rather than politics. Here we go.
Ten years ago, nearly to the day, Quebec had a vote over separation. The vote did not pass, and our federal government created a sponsorship program to promote federalism within Quebec. The problem was that the chunk of change allotted to the sponsorship program got tied up in ad agencies that grossly over billed, and fell into the pockets of sleazy politicians. A judge has just released a report that stems from an extended commission that presents facts and assigns blame. Now the heads start to roll.
No one doubts that this scandal was a shitty thing to have happen, and that some knuckles need rapping. Our current Prime Minister Paul Martin, then finance minister at the time of the ad scandal, has been cleared of any wrong doing. The former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has been flagged as a dirty bugger. Clean Paul has handed the judge’s report to the Mounties for investigation. Martin has also ordered his party to repay stolen funds to taxpayers. He has also promised an election up to six months after this report’s release. Now for New Zealand, a country that nearly ousted its Prime Minister over a speeding ticket, it may, or may not, seem that Martin needs to bow out of politics and leave a supposedly corruption saturated party to the wolves.
The Conservative opposition leader Stephen Harper wants this to happen in a bad way. Saying that Martin was in on it despite the fact that Judge John Gomery cleared his name and that since 1995 the Martin-Chrétien relationship was a sour and distant one, nearly dividing the party altogether. It is quite likely that Martin was left clear out of the loop of the scandal.
The opposition has been handled a golden egg to cripple the government, and the best that they can come up with, despite the strong likelihood that Martin and his crew had nothing to do with the scam, is that “they’re all alike; they’re the same bunch and deserve to be unseated!”
Stephen Harper is an annoying bugger from the get go. His very manner of speech is bloody annoying. He speaks with an assertiveness that hints at the voting public being a stupid bunch, and that if they do not agree with him, on what he believes to be obvious and outrageous, they should be considered idiots. Moreover, instead of pointing at some of the major follies in the last ten years of liberal governance from military spending to healthcare improvement, from education to social assistance, even in promoting a more lucrative Canadian investment market, Harper can do no more than simply sit there pointing and saying, “You’re all bad people.” Does this guy need a juice or something? Did he miss nap time? Maybe he’s queuing for a fight after recess?
The real tragedy about this whole thing is that it will ultimately make the Canadian parliament less democratic. The debate on whether or not Canadians feel that the Liberals deserve ousting over this will consume media attention and public imagination for months. It will fan political fires in Alberta and Quebec. Most tragic of it all, it will detract from pressing matters such as the status of aboriginal health, Canada-U.S. relations, education and health reforms, and other matters that impact more individuals on the whole than the political rhetoric in Ottawa.
Wouldn’t it be grand if we were to tune out this forthcoming political shit-storm and focus our energies on improving governance so that more people were able to participate in the pressing issues that matter to them as individuals and communities?
The neat thing about Canada is that we tend not to distract public attention away from our pressing social issues with war and the like; instead we do it with politics. Over the next two weeks to two months the Canadian press will be hi-jacked with a brewing political scandal, and only in a New Zealand-based blog can one have a fighting chance at making sense of the whole thing as it will impact people rather than politics. Here we go.
Ten years ago, nearly to the day, Quebec had a vote over separation. The vote did not pass, and our federal government created a sponsorship program to promote federalism within Quebec. The problem was that the chunk of change allotted to the sponsorship program got tied up in ad agencies that grossly over billed, and fell into the pockets of sleazy politicians. A judge has just released a report that stems from an extended commission that presents facts and assigns blame. Now the heads start to roll.
No one doubts that this scandal was a shitty thing to have happen, and that some knuckles need rapping. Our current Prime Minister Paul Martin, then finance minister at the time of the ad scandal, has been cleared of any wrong doing. The former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has been flagged as a dirty bugger. Clean Paul has handed the judge’s report to the Mounties for investigation. Martin has also ordered his party to repay stolen funds to taxpayers. He has also promised an election up to six months after this report’s release. Now for New Zealand, a country that nearly ousted its Prime Minister over a speeding ticket, it may, or may not, seem that Martin needs to bow out of politics and leave a supposedly corruption saturated party to the wolves.
The Conservative opposition leader Stephen Harper wants this to happen in a bad way. Saying that Martin was in on it despite the fact that Judge John Gomery cleared his name and that since 1995 the Martin-Chrétien relationship was a sour and distant one, nearly dividing the party altogether. It is quite likely that Martin was left clear out of the loop of the scandal.
The opposition has been handled a golden egg to cripple the government, and the best that they can come up with, despite the strong likelihood that Martin and his crew had nothing to do with the scam, is that “they’re all alike; they’re the same bunch and deserve to be unseated!”
Stephen Harper is an annoying bugger from the get go. His very manner of speech is bloody annoying. He speaks with an assertiveness that hints at the voting public being a stupid bunch, and that if they do not agree with him, on what he believes to be obvious and outrageous, they should be considered idiots. Moreover, instead of pointing at some of the major follies in the last ten years of liberal governance from military spending to healthcare improvement, from education to social assistance, even in promoting a more lucrative Canadian investment market, Harper can do no more than simply sit there pointing and saying, “You’re all bad people.” Does this guy need a juice or something? Did he miss nap time? Maybe he’s queuing for a fight after recess?
The real tragedy about this whole thing is that it will ultimately make the Canadian parliament less democratic. The debate on whether or not Canadians feel that the Liberals deserve ousting over this will consume media attention and public imagination for months. It will fan political fires in Alberta and Quebec. Most tragic of it all, it will detract from pressing matters such as the status of aboriginal health, Canada-U.S. relations, education and health reforms, and other matters that impact more individuals on the whole than the political rhetoric in Ottawa.
Wouldn’t it be grand if we were to tune out this forthcoming political shit-storm and focus our energies on improving governance so that more people were able to participate in the pressing issues that matter to them as individuals and communities?
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