Well, it looks like Canada's experiment with privatization-based neo-con politics has about 2 weeks to go if polls are to be believed. Except for wacky Alberta where a stick painted blue could be elected premier and where any amount of money can be wasted because they are wading in oil, conservatism is on its heels. The Maritimes don't count as they are not actually so much conservatives as state socialists in suits either living on mailbox money and/or, like Nova Scotia, still really reeling from past big spending Tory deficits, fiscal and moral, and/or it's New Brunswick...
It is truly a joy to watch Tory wheels come off, with phrases like "kitten-eaters" entering the language and now the "media" being blamed for it all. Magic moments.
Comments
Wayne - September 16, 2003 11:01 AM
You sound like you might be a good candidate for the Alliance Party...you really talk like Harper...who hasn't a snowball chance in hell to get a seat in the Maritimes.
Alan - September 16, 2003 11:15 AM
If the Alliance were legit and had a hope of a seat anywhere other than the wacko west, it would be irrelevant whether they got a seat in the Maritimes.
The passing of the buck of the economic woes of the Maritimes by provincial and federal governments of all stripes, local business and media is scandelous and yet intense local faith. Bumbling intervention by incompetant economic planners has screwed the opportunity in the Maritimes not upheld it. Private business has not stood up against it but, in fact, bought in to the easy road when their Tories are sending out the cheques. Removing vast sections of the labour force from full year employment <i>perpetually</i> can do nothing but remove the incentive to earn your own buck, to plan for the future. It is still paternalism when pater is loved. I am a socialist and I see this stuff, having spent enough time in innumerable funding agency offices on behalf of clients.
Wayne - September 16, 2003 12:13 PM
<i>"If the Alliance were legit and had a hope of a seat anywhere other than the wacko west, it would be irrelevant whether they got a seat in the Maritimes."</i>...very true, and a sad reflection on the state of affairs in this country. We do need a second party to have any kinda democracy in Canada, something lacking today. Pot smoking, needle pushing, morally confused Liberals need to give their head a shake, or have it shaken for them. Unfortunately, there is no party or leader on the horizon that can do it.
What we need to do here is stop providing a summer playground for Upper Canadians, and focus more on encouraging corporate development, the kind that generates untold wealth for the shareholder/owner, while riding the back of the worker by offering minimum wage to the employee. That way, our youth will be forced to leave, and we can just close the Maritimes and everybody can live in Toronto.
Alan - September 16, 2003 12:30 PM
You are not suggesting in your irony that there is no space between false economy transfer-based community and disaster? That is the line of the provincial political parties fed by their mainlining of transfers. By the way, the youth leave now in droves because there is no opportunity for skill and capability in the mediocrity/mediocracy of the hand-out, public-debt for corporate bums and crony preferment.
Ben - September 16, 2003 6:49 PM
What do you mean there's noone on the horizon? What direction are you looking in? I can't be the only person that thinks there's a decent chance of us getting a Bernard Lord vs Frank McKenna showdown when Martin finishes his first term. At least one of the two of them is destined for big things. Big things I say.
Alan - September 16, 2003 7:27 PM
That would be true if the conservatives in the West would vote for a conservative from the East and the conservatives from the East would for a conservative from the West. Until that is solved, Lord will sit in NB and Liberals will morph again and again and we'll all forget what it is like to have responsible government.