Irony: The Canadian National Pastime
From the good offices of the ever-vigilant Toronto Star comes this absolute gem:
There’s a possibility Stephen Harper’s first act as prime minister may have breached the parliamentary ethical code for MPs, the federal ethics commissioner indicated Friday.
This from a guy who basically campaigned on the premise that Paul Martin's people were all Sponsorship Scandal-tainted Chretien dead-enders, and that he could do the job better and cleaner than the Liberals. (Shades of "restor[ing] hono[u]r and dignity to the White House," anyone?)
In Canadian politics there's a longstanding axiom that Canadians elect a Conservative government once per generation to remind themselves why they vote Liberal. Myself, I'm torn between wanting to see Harper do a bit better than Mulroney, who, if I recall correctly, lost a Cabinet Minister per week through corruption-related resignations, and just watching the scrofulous bastard go down in a magnificent flaming wreck.
Hmm, considering that he's tapped the Mike Harris anti-talent pool, my viler nature wins out and I'm reluctantly (or not) opting for "flaming wreck."
There’s a possibility Stephen Harper’s first act as prime minister may have breached the parliamentary ethical code for MPs, the federal ethics commissioner indicated Friday.
This from a guy who basically campaigned on the premise that Paul Martin's people were all Sponsorship Scandal-tainted Chretien dead-enders, and that he could do the job better and cleaner than the Liberals. (Shades of "restor[ing] hono[u]r and dignity to the White House," anyone?)
In Canadian politics there's a longstanding axiom that Canadians elect a Conservative government once per generation to remind themselves why they vote Liberal. Myself, I'm torn between wanting to see Harper do a bit better than Mulroney, who, if I recall correctly, lost a Cabinet Minister per week through corruption-related resignations, and just watching the scrofulous bastard go down in a magnificent flaming wreck.
Hmm, considering that he's tapped the Mike Harris anti-talent pool, my viler nature wins out and I'm reluctantly (or not) opting for "flaming wreck."
posted by Interrobang at 12:49 PM
2 Comments:
Brian is Back?
We noticed during the campaign that Harper was in almost daily contact with Brian Mulroney, and many of us suspected that Mulroney was behind Harper’s promise to Quebec to gut the federal government by transferring taxation powers from the centre to the provinces. All that for a mess of porridge in the form of less than a dozen Quebec seats. What a small number of silver shekels that deal resulted in ...
Now we see the suspicions confirmed in the article by Robin V. Sears in the March 2006 issue of Policy Options, if Spears is right. He writes:
“Meticulously tutored by Mulroney, the master of Quebec coalition politics, Harper has been sending many of the right signals to restless Quebec federalists: an appropriate role in international organizations, an acknowledgement that Ottawa takes too large a tax bite from all of the provinces, including Quebec, and recognition that excess revenue has fed a federal appetite to interfere in provincial jurisdictions.”
Just a minute, Mr. Spears! Mulroney was a master of Quebec coalition politics?? He is the Prime Minister who just about wrecked the country with his kowtowing to separatists in his desperate bid to gain and retain power for his party.
Some master!
Canadians should watch very carefully what Harper does in Quebec, given the nature of his mentor’s proven track record in sowing dissension in the country.
Harper might also ponder whether he should listen too carefully to a man who, after his leaving, saw his party melt down in the most spectacular implosion in Canadian political history. The puppet should beware the puppet master....
Yep, policy lessons from Brian Baloney and Mike Fucking Harris, masters of the political meltdown. With luck, it gets him sooner, rather than later.
Thanks for the cite; I'll try to dig that one up.
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