It could be that the 1994 date of his speech, which the Liberals extracted thus making the context "disappear", speaks much. It was a time of turmoil and the start (or continuation, I'm not exactly sure) of Chretien's Sponsorship program.

So the time context is uncertainty over continuing separist feelings and efforts. A hypothetical one or two government situation (the rest is filler, but equally applicable) would leave Canadians (and Quebec) still looking at what form of government they needed to continue onwards. And in that respect his comment probably makes sense. Not exactly "scary" as the Liberal website is trying to portray, and certainly cogent.

Interestingly, the same issues are before us today.

As for the form of his current solutions, I imagine that they are encapsulated in the Conservative 2004 Platform document available at their website. Hardly scary there, the thrust to reverse the democratic deficit that plagues us (per Mr. Martin).

While you are right that this is 10 years ago, thinking of the prospect of <i>how</i> one gets to more than one (or two) national government is so incomprehensible that the framing of it as a mere backdrop to the greater cause of the generic call for "less government" is a bit mind numbing...which is kind of where the platform leads me on a slightly more banal scale. I am still not left understanding there the past think-tank notions fit in the current public policy. It is the disconnect more than the platform that is unnerving. Who is this guy?

Maybe you should start referring to him as "Mr. Prime Minister"?

H. L. Menken wrote, "The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."

That's why less government is better.

H.L. Menken also wrote:<blockquote>

I attended a number of cop soirees of great elegance with the tables piled mountain-high with all the delicacies of the season, and a keg of beer every few feet. The graft of these worthy men, at least in my time, was a great deal less than reformers alleged and the envious common people believed. Most of them, in my judgement, were very honest fellows, at least within the bounds of reason. Those who patrolled the fish-markets naturally had plenty of fish to eat and those who manned the police-boats in the harbor took a certain toll from the pungy watermelons, cantaloupes, vegetables, crabs and oysters from the Eastern Shore of Maryland: indeed, this last impost amounted to a kind <i>octroi</i> and at one time the harbor force accumulated so much provender that they had to seize an empty warehouse on the waterfront to store it.</blockquote>That's why cops on the take are better.