Posted on 05/21/2005 5:58:45 AM PDT by GMMAC
worldnetdaily
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Ottawa's political soap opera
By Ted Byfield
Canada's Liberal government survived parliamentary defeat Thursday by a vote of 153 to 152 in the House of Commons, a victory bestowed upon it by two ex-Conservatives who supported the Liberals, one of them out to even the score, the other out to score a seat in the Liberal Cabinet.
It was the first time in Canadian history that the House had recorded a tie vote on a motion that could defeat a government. The tie was broken by the speaker who, in the tradition of the ancient British Parliament, must always vote to sustain the status quo.
Where this left the government was not altogether clear. While the opposition Conservatives and the Quebec separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois, unofficially reassured the country that they would not combine to oust the government again until next year, this was no guarantee that they would not do so. There will be numerous other votes of "confidence" before the current parliamentary session ends, and the government could go down on any one of them.
In the meantime, the real loser was not so much the Conservative Party as its deputy leader, Peter MacKay. The surprise turncoat Conservative, who 24 hours before the vote was taken deserted the party in exchange for a high-profile portfolio in the Liberal government, was his exceedingly rich girlfriend. And she didn't tell him what she had intended to do until she did it.
This was Belinda Stronach, the 39-year-old daughter of Frank Stronach, zillionaire founder of Magna International, which calls itself the biggest auto parts manufacturer in the world. Stronach had made his beautiful blonde, twice-married, twice-divorced daughter president and CEO of Magna three years ago at a starting salary of $9 million a year. The media promptly dubbed her the most powerful woman in Canadian business.
However, after two years as the most powerful woman in Canadian business, she lost interest in Canadian business and decided that she would rather be prime minister of Canada instead. Armed with her natural charm, her natural beauty and her natural inheritance, she played a central role in the long-sought amalgamation of Canada's two conservative parties, the Alliance and the moribund Progressive Conservatives, then being led by the Nova Scotia lawyer Peter MacKay.
The two soon became what is called "an item." Belinda, with all her natural assets and the best handlers money could buy, naturally ran for the leadership of the newly merged party. She found the going very difficult. Her speechwriters gave her telling lines to say and she flubbed them. At one point she was left silent and bewildered before a national television audience because she got up before the teleprompter went on. When the great debate came between the leadership contenders, she didn't show up. So Stephen Harper became the leader, a policy wonk from the West, and within a year brought the new party up to the point where last June it diminished the hitherto unconquerable Liberals into a minority government.
But Belinda was undismayed. She ran for the Conservatives in a Toronto suburb, where Magna had just happened to open a plant that added 3,000 new jobs, and became a Conservative MP in Harper's caucus.
From the start, however, she didn't like it there. There were all these dreadful Christians from the West – backward people, full of "hate" who opposed gay marriage and wanted to own guns. A lot of them didn't even believe in abortion on demand. They were just not part of her set. She must change them, she decided. She would use all her natural assets. It didn't work. They remained obdurately the same.
But then of course there was Peter. She went everywhere with Peter. They were together at parties, together in the caucus, together in corridors of Parliament. They just belonged to each other. It was wonderful.
But there was also Harper. He was not wonderful. He was cold, distant, aloof. Until last week, that is. Then, after she had told the media that he was making a bad mistake forcing an election, he called her into his office.
"He yelled, he screamed, he berated her," reported the ultra-liberal Globe and Mail, quoting a source it was unable to name. The story was not widely accepted, since few were able to imagine the dour, passionless Harper yelling and screaming at anybody, the chief criticism of him being that he doesn't yell and scream enough.
Anyway, the next day she was at a function in Toronto where her old friend David Peterson, ex-Liberal premier of Ontario, whispered in her ear that maybe she should talk to Paul. He could arrange it. The following night, after a romantic dinner with Peter, she slid away. She didn't say where she was going, the wretched MacKay later lamented. In fact, she was going to the prime minister's residence for a warm chat and the deed was done. The cuckolded MacKay was one of the last to find out.
Clearly, the Liberals knew talent when they saw it. She was immediately made minister of "Human Resources and Skills Development" and would be in charge of cleaning up the corruption currently being exposed by the Gomery commission. There, a horde of unscrupulous Liberals have been discovered putting their personal interests ahead of those of the party and the country, something Belinda finds unacceptable and disgusting. Precisely what "skills" she was expected to develop among the people she will be cleaning up was not clear, since most of them seem fairly skilled already.
Her appointment was happily but gravely announced by Prime Minister Paul Martin. He wanted to make clear, he said, it had nothing to do with the impending parliamentary vote. Incredulous laughter convulsed the press corps.
The other ex-Conservative who voted with the Liberals, the guitar-player Chuck Cadman of Vancouver, who sometimes showed up in the Commons replete with pony tail and blue jeans, had somewhat more credibility going for him. He had lost the Conservative nomination last year when busloads of East Indians showed up at the nomination meeting and defeated him. He wanted Harper to void the Conservative nomination and let him run unchallenged as a rightwing independent. Harper wouldn't do it. Cadman ran anyway and took the constituency, Thursday he evened the score.
But, he warned, this doesn't mean the Liberals can count on him. The next time he may vote the other way. His assertion, among other things, guaranteed the continuing instability of the government in Canada.
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Oh, and "beautiful blonde" must mean something different in Canada than in California, you can do as well at Burger King if you aren't too firm on the "blond" part.
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