Sooner or later chickens come home to roost. They really do. I've never seen it but cliches do not lie. So it is fun, then, to watch someone somewhere who is a more principled, more confident leader than the bad batch of all stripes we have to deal with in Ottawa these days:
Danny Williams, the Newfoundland and Labrador Premier who has promised to make the federal Conservatives regret last week's budget, on Tuesday ratcheted up his attacks on Prime Minister Stephen Harper. His government has launched an advertising campaign calling into question the honesty of Mr. Harper. "If we can't accept at face value the promise of our Prime Minister, then who can?" asks the ad, which will run in newspapers across the country. "A promise made should be a promise kept. And as Mr. Harper pointed out, there is no greater fraud than a promise not kept."What a shocker! Imagine holding the PM to account rather than playing hide and seek when he glowers and grumbles as he stumbles as appears to be the wizardry of the Loyal but Not Very Capable Opposition. I remember the first week of law school in Halifax when all the keener sons of Bay Street partners of Calgary politicians opened their yaps to answer a question condescendingly only to face the wrath and wit of the baymen Newfs in the back, ripping them and their answers apart as the rest of us giggled and got out of the way. Go Danny! Remember - Atlantic Canada is right on this point and Ottawa promised. It is as simple as that.
Comments
gorthos - March 28, 2007 9:48 am
Excellent. Who doesn't like a good Tory on Tory jello wrestle.. :)
Paul of Kingston - March 28, 2007 9:55 am
Al, if prime ministers in waiting kept all the shallow promises that they made on the campaign trail then this country really would be in trouble.
As I see it, the problem is not all with the promises made and not kept but also with the folk who willfully buy in to popularity commitments that are either unfair when viewed through a national lense or set bad fiscal precedents.
If Harper is the villain then Williams is the fool.
Wealth is wealth.
gorthos - March 28, 2007 9:59 am
What Paul said.. but I still enjoy public dissent and yelling matches, especially when they are elected officials.
Alan - March 28, 2007 10:09 am
Ha! Thems that have got for free and got it on the backs of others. Thems that had not but now do not are being told to make their own way up. No way to run a nation.
Paul of Kingston - March 28, 2007 10:36 am
I understand the position of the Newfs but still can't help noticing the self serving (read Alberta) convenience of the PMO pretending that petroleum revenues are not real and do not have any impact on the financial needs of a province. It seems to me that the Newfs have been rooked in the past by convenient but unfair deals as well (read Churchill Falls) one might expect them to call a spade a spade.
All in all it seems politics and oil never amount to anything good in this world.
Jay Currie - March 28, 2007 4:20 pm
I have long failed to comprehend the logic of excluding resource revenue from, well, revenue for purposes of equalization. And I was amused to watch Danny throw any pretense of argument under the bus and start hauling down the Canadian flag in a tantrum worthy of a three year old.
He seems to be at it again. As parents learn to their regret, if you reward bad behaviour you re-enforce it and the child learns to repeat the behavior.
That said, Harper got himself into the mess in his quest for office by triple cross your heart promising never, ever to do the sensible thing and include the resource revenue. There were, after all, votes to be gained by throwing common sense under the bus on the campaign trail.
But the real issue here is the badly broken equalization program which needs to be scrapped entirely; but that is another topic. (And potentially a redundant one as, apparently, most of Newfoundland is now in Fort McMurray making CO2 and its byproduct, oil.)
Paul of Kingston - March 28, 2007 5:22 pm
"making CO2 and its byproduct, oil"
That's very good. I'm laughing my ass of here.