And the Coward Runs Away

By BJ

So it’s official. Our bully of a Prime Minister has reacted to the opposition standing up to him in stereotypical fashion by running away with his tail between his legs to the safe, warm bosom of his base, where he will cry loudly about how mean and nasty the other parties are for not wanting him to be team captain anymore.

Bad enough under normal circumstances to see such spoiled-brat antics from our Head of Government, but circumstances right now are far from normal. The economic crisis that is roiling world markets requires significant and immediate attention from our government and with his, “screw you guys, I’m going home”, attitude, Harper has made it clear that clinging to power is far more important to him than dealing with the issues he tells us Canadians elected him to deal with.

While I have no major problem with the coalition option being presented, I’m hardly an enthusiastic supporter of it either, at least under its current leadership. The best thing that can be said about the under-whelming Stephane Dion leading the coalition is that at least he won’t be leading it for very long.

That said, the issues facing the nation are far too significant and pressing for Parliament to enter stasis mode for two months with the question of governance authority left up in the air. If Harper thinks the coalition would “weaken Canada”, he should give some thought what the continued uncertainty of the government’s authority would do.

He should, but it’s clear he won’t due to the fact that he’s only worried about his own fate and not Canadian’s.

If Harper were half the leader he loudly proclaims Canadian's elected him to be, he would have stood his ground like a man and faced the music of his making. Instead, he's shown his true colour as a weak little momma's boy too scared to face the consequences of his actions and hoping that unleashing the surrogate attack dogs against his opponents while he remains safely ensconced out of their reach will allow him to keep the ball he took home with him.

The problem is, it's our ball! And we really need the game to continue so the mess gets cleaned up. Harper has abrogated his responsibilities in a desperate bid to hold on to power. He's no leader, and one can only hope that the opposition, (of the grass-roots variety, since as noted above, Dion is hopeless and we'd have to wait until May before a competent leader takes his place), takes him to task over the holidays for abandoning his post.

Comments

[navguy12]

Having just finished reading a book called Hot, Flat and Crowded (Thomas L. Friedman, 2008), I was struck by many items found therein. Here are two examples…

“You are what you do, not what you say.” (pages 396 and 397) As stated by a 12-year-old Canadian girl to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, it applies to the actions of our current Prime Minister.

On page 399, “At a minimum, for the green movement to be taken seriously, we need a million people on the Mall demanding a price signal-a carbon tax, or a cap-and-trade regime, or a national renewable energy mandate.”

For any government facing today’s environmental and financial realities, the focus of said government must be aimed at shifting our fossil fuel (a.k.a. “fuels from hell”) based economy into a renewable energy (a.k.a. “fuels from heaven”) based economy.

Instead, the Conservative financial statement was simply announcing ways for the Prime Minister to cling to power via petty, right wing dogmatic policies that have nothing to do with leadership.

Also, most informed voters know that printing money simply to let people continue to consume more carbon rich products (that will, no doubt, end up in a land fill within 3 years) may satisfy someone on Bay Street, but will only saddle the rest of us on Main Street with more environmental and financial debt.

The Prime Minister claims he has a majority of voters backing him to substantiate his obtuse view of the world. If indeed 32% of voters in the last election supported the party he leads, then 68% of voters chose “not Conservative” (in the last election).

So, while the Conservative propaganda machine will now use the next 8 weeks to cling to power by labeling the proposed “not Conservative” coalition anything akin to the anti-Christ, why can’t one million “not Conservative” Canadians peacefully march on Capitol Hill in Ottawa the day parliament is called back into session?

[joe Lepiano]

Wake up Canada! While there’s little we can do about the quality of person who decides to pursue public office there is plenty we can do about the structure of our parliamentary system. I find it ridiculous that the way out of our current mess relies in good part on the proclamations of an unqualified otherwise irrelevant socialite who wasn’t even elected but appointed by...who appointed the GG anyway? We don’t need a GG or the irrelevant vestigial symbolism the position holds. What we do need is a way to fix our parliamentary system and the way it’s elected it’s obvious that the current system doesn’t fit the bill. Then again, maybe our appointed senate can come up with something. WAKE UP CANADIANS.

[BJ Bjornson]

Navguy,

There already have been rallies, and more are planned, but to get a million Canadians on either side to show up over what is at its heart a question of parliamentary protocol is greatly overestimating the passion of the Canadian public, (or underestimating their apathy, take your pick). Seriously, the biggest political rally I can remember was the Unity Rally held before the Quebec referendum in 1991, and I think that one topped out at 100,000.

Joe,

I hear you about the Governor General. If memory serves, Michelle Jean was appointed by Paul Martin, and clearly out of her depth in making these decisions, though to be fair, as a vestigial symbol, I'm pretty sure nobody thought she'd ever have to do anything more important than read prepared texts and smile for the cameras at official functions. The position clearly needs to be re-thought, with an eye to some kind of confirmation like we were supposed to get for judicial appointments so getting actually qualified individuals might become the norm. And toss the bloody appointed Senate entirely.