Political Scheming

Our politicians are at it again. Minority governments in Canada are notoriously unstable, mainly because the Liberal Party has the inbred belief that it is the natural governing party. Now we can see how they've been manipulating us with our own money, and then putting that money in their pockets. As near as I can tell, the Liberal party is run by people that are crooks at best.

Allegations have been coming out of the Gomery inquiry that paint the Liberals as corrupt; laundering the public funds to line their own pockets. The current Prime Minister was the Finance Minister and one of the senior Quebec ministers at the time. The taxpayers are left to choose between believing he didn't know what was going on with the taxpayer's money in his own province, or he did know, and went along. Either is a damning indictment, and cast strong doubt if he should be allowed to continue being Prime Minister.

At least that's what the Conservatives have to say. They have a point, but they're almost certainly not lily white on this issue. At least one could say they haven't been involved in this sort of thing for more than a decade. They see the weakness in the Liberals and want to pull the plug on the current parliament. They think they can win a majority if an election were held soon. They don't want to wait for the Gomery report to come out because they have no idea how strong the Liberals will be. Six months is a lot of squirming in political terms.

I'm a big fan of the "throw the rascals out" school of political thought. But that most likely leads to a Conservative government and a Bloc opposition. For several reasons I'm repulsed by that option. I'm actually in Stephen Harper's riding, and the man's position on equality makes me gag. I cannot vote for him. If the separatists had the courage of their convictions, they wouldn't sit in the House, making big dollar salaries, while plotting to destroy Canada. In any case, there won't be any Bloc candidates in my riding. The NDP will run, of course, but I think they are a bunch of rainbow-chasing fruitloops. Listening to Layton's response to the Prime Ministers speech on prime time last week made me wonder if he lives in the same universe as the rest of us.

In my riding that leaves the Green Party and whatever independent chooses to run. I usually look at the independent, but mostly they are single issue candidates, and high on the fruitloop scale. That leaves the Greens. I think, right now anyway, they are the least offensive choice, and on the evidence so far, could be considered a good choice. They recognize that changes based on environmental concerns need to be made in today's world, not some idealistic world. They recognize a transition has to happen.

I've met and talked to their party leader. I don't agree with everything he says, but he seems sensible and pragmatic. It wouldn't hurt to have some of them in the House, and I'd be pleased if they had enough seats to become an official party. More voices on the radio and debates, and we'd get an idea of how they'd perform.

But to get back to election results. I'd be furious if we went to the time, trouble, and expense of an election, just to end up with the same or similar balance of power. A Conservative minority would be even more unstable than a Liberal minority. An election would trash the bills before the house, which would be a shame. It would serve the Conservatives right if the Governer General refused to dissolve the House, and asked Harper to form the Government. Or try to. There's precedent, and the results would be fascinating.

While overall, I think the Liberal Party should be disbanded, and the Liberal members forever forbidden from buying membership in another party, (to say nothing of being investigated for receiving stolen property) I don't think we should do it now. Even though Martin's promise to call an election within a month of the Gomery report made me think of nothing else but a thief asking for time to make good his getaway, I don't want an election now. The evidence of the Gomery inquiry is sworn testimony, but it isn't cross-examined, and most importantly, it isn't over. Who knows what will come out tomorrow? I want to see Gomery's full report.

Even more importantly, I want to see controls that will prevent this sort of thing from happening again. I don't know what those controls would look like, but we have to have them. I might even vote for the Conservatives if they could propose something reasonable on this front. Their dinosaur attitude to civil rights will be changing sooner rather than later.