Posted on 12/01/2005 9:37:55 AM PST by quidnunc
When Canada's minority Liberal government fell Monday night in a parliamentary no-confidence vote, one line in Prime Minister Paul Martin's post-vote speech struck this expatriate Canadian as even more self-righteous than usual.
"Canada is now the conscience of the world," Martin declared.
While Martin and many Canadians consider themselves morally superior to Americans, simply better human beings, the implication that Canada is now the moral beacon for every other country on the face of the earth is astounding, even taking into account Canadians' deeply entrenched, obnoxious smugness. But this "We're better than them" boast is key to Martin's efforts to retain power in the January 23 national election.
His main threat comes from Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative party of Canada, the least anti-American of the four parties competing in the election. Among the scare tactics Martin will use against Harper — and make no mistake, the thrust of the Martin campaign will be fear — will be the charge that a conservative government would turn Canada into a cesspool like the United States.
U.S. readers should understand that, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it all depends on what the meaning of the word "conservative" is. A Canadian conservative is similar to a moderate Democrat here. There is no true conservative party in Canada, as we know conservatism.
Nonetheless, Martin will attempt to do to Harper what he did in the last election, paint him as a right-wing lunatic with a "hidden agenda." In fact, apart from policy differences on immigration, Canada-U.S. relations, and possibly crime, there is little reason to believe Harper, especially with a minority government, would differ substantially from Martin except, one would hope, in competence and ethics.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I don't know where "conscience" enters into it, but Canada is now virtually a one-party "democracy," along the lines of Mexico before Vicente Fox was elected. And while Canada may have a conscience, it is absent a soul, a country devoid of any national identity except that defined by its anti-Americanism.
If Martin loses it will be because the Canadian Health System is starting to resemble Zimbabwe's.
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
New Ipsos Poll Puts Canada In Dead Heat
A new poll by AP-Ipsos, based on a survey done during the debate over the no-confidence motion, shows that the Liberals have dropped into a dead heat with the Conservatives on a national basis. This data has not received wide release -- in fact, I had to buy a membership at Ipsos in order to see the data. Based on a sample of 1,000 adults -- a sampling type that normally would overreport Liberal support -- the results surprisingly mirror those of the private Robbins Research poll taken earlier this month. Both parties get 31% of the national vote, and NDP picks up 18%. BQ gets 14%, all of it from Quebec.
Their support base in Ontario appears to have seriously eroded. Earlier polls show that the Liberals once enjoyed a double-digit lead in their power base. Now that lead has collapsed into a statistical tie with the Conservatives, 37%-35%. The NDP appears to have taken advantage of Liberal slippage, moving up to 21% support in the province. The Tories now outstrip the Liberals in British Columbia, where the Liberals had made inroads in provincial voting last March; the Tories have a 34%-28% advantage on the West Coast province. Liberals only have an outright plurality in the Maritimes; they lead the Tories 24-7 in Quebec but get trounced by Conservative partner Bloc Quebecois, 58-24, showing that the Liberals can expect to lose seats in the region most touched by Adscam.
Canadians: Mexicanes del Norte
The whole world is now suffering from an overinflated ego. Is there any country who doesn't think they are better than the rest (excluding Mexico)?
Off topic, but how does it feel to have a thread named after you?....
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ROFLMHO!!!!!
But Alberta is the only sane province in Canada.
Other western provinces are less insane but Alberta is the only province that has a clue.
ping
Canada has no moral compass.
Thanks for the ping snidely.
Canada Ping!
Please FReepmail me to get on or off this Canada ping list.
That's great news!
A smugness that is, unfortunately, contagious. A close friend of my childhood emigrated to Canada and became insufferable in his nonstop critique of America, something like a zealous former smoker.
About the last straw was when my “friend” sold out his Southern homeland with a novel imagined in our home state about a racist Southern sheriff and his shenanigans. Here is the things: My buddy and I lived in a yuppie enclave of the New South and knew absolutely nothing about bigoted Southern sheriffs except what we learned on the Dukes of Hazard.
But now he is hip, internationalist, smug, and Canadian….but I repeat myself. (I know there are many fine Canadians – some on this board – and it just pains me so much to see the current state of affairs after innocently imaging for so long that Canada was our spiritual as well as geographic neighbor. Unhappily, there is a kind of smug profit in selling out your neighbor just as there is in a fabricated exposé on your homeland.)
Arrogance, coupled with impotence, is pretty funny. Canada may actually be worse than France.
For whatever it's worth, I found the article unduly pessimistic and negative. Aside from Canada having far more legitimate conservatives and generally people with their heads screwed on right than the author is willing to credit, it seems plain that, as with our left-wing expatriates, he too has lost considerable perspective both from time away and his now stateside vantage point.
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