Posted on 05/15/2005 6:14:21 AM PDT by Clive
The other day I heard complaint after complaint about the base level of dialogue and oratory in the House of Commons.
Sure, things have degenerated of late, but there are times when great oratory can be heard.
Just such an example happened on Wednesday, when Stephen Harper, Leader of the Official Opposition and the Conservative party, delivered a lengthy, expertly crafted and well-delivered speech, that outlined why the Liberals should no longer be running the country.
The speech, which was delivered one day after the House voted 153 to 150 against the governing Liberals, is 13 pages long.
Harper delivered some zinger lines, but that night just one short quote from it was used on the CBC National. And yet that same day and the next on CBC, "analysts" complained about the level of oratory again.
So, I will fill in some of the gaps ignored by the CBC as to why the Conservative party can no longer abide supporting a government which has been shown to be corrupt, fiscally irresponsible and blatantly undemocratic.
Harper pointed out that, five years ago, an internal audit was released that gave the first clues of the scandal hiding within the Sponsorship Program, designed to better the federalist cause in a post-referendum Quebec.
"There is a long story behind the delayed release of that audit for the 2000 election," pointed out Harper.
Then came the Auditor General's report on government advertising, released in February of last year, which confirmed that out of the $250 million sponsorship program, "much of which was spent on activities of questionable value in the first place, more than $100 million in commissions went to five Liberal-friendly advertising agencies with little or no evidence of work being performed for the contracts.
"We all remember the famous case where Groupaction received $550,000 to submit a photocopy of a report identical to a report it had prepared the previous year," for another $500,000.
Harper pointed out in his speech that through the inquiry by Justice John Gomery, we have since learned that the Liberal party received much of this stolen money "through a sophisticated network and scheme of money laundering.
"In recent days, we have been viewing the revolting spectacle of Liberal witnesses before the Gomery commission describing how thick the envelopes of money they received in secret were.
"While the rest of Canada is striving to earn an honest living, support their families and meet their obligations, including paying income tax, we can see these Liberal organizers and their friends trying to remember whether they received their dirty money in $20s or $100s," quipped Harper.
Harper then pointed out how Prime Minister Paul Martin vowed in February 2004 that he would return "every penny of dirty money," but now we're hearing a different story.
"The Liberal party fought the 1997 and 2000 elections with dirty money. This is a fact. Since the Liberals did not return any of the money in 2004, they fought the last election with dirty money, and now it looks, in violation of an order of the House, as though they are willing to fight a fourth straight election with money that has been stolen from the Canadian taxpayers."
Since April 21, Paul Martin has promised to spend an additional $23,460,838 -- or $23.46 billion -- without any discussions taking place in Parliament and even though he no longer has the confidence of the House. Martin doesn't have the authority to spend an additional 23 cents nevermind $23 billion.
But the worst corruption has to be how the Liberals have undermined our judiciary.
Most disturbingly, said Harper, are the confessions under oath of "the former executive director of the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec.
"He has gone on record saying that a member of the judicial advisory committee responsible for selecting judges for the province of Quebec was in the habit of calling him to find out how much money lawyers who are potential judicial candidates had contributed to the party," said Harper.
"The Liberals have undermined Canadians' confidence in our political system and even manipulated our judicial system ... and is a threat to Canadian democracy.
How?
"Spending taxpayer money without parliamentary approval, cancelling opposition day debates, ignoring majority votes in the House, filibustering its own legislation and ignoring calls for the government to resign is not the behaviour of a democratic government. None of it is consistent with the spirit and the principles of parliamentary democracy," said Harper.
"A year ago, the prime minister was promising to slay the democratic deficit," added Harper.
"Today, he is threatening to slay democracy itself.
"The prime minister, I add, has no moral authority to govern and has no constitutional or democratic authority after Tuesday to govern this country."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
It was high oratory in every way.
Too bad our Liberal apologist national broadcaster thought so little of it.
I had explored Sympatico ADSL but they could not assure me that any of their broadband modems would work under Linux or OS/2 which were the two operating systems that I was using (I am now using Linux and have Win2000 aboard only at the request of my son). Since then I have been able to help other linux users around the world connect to ADSL service but it is not worth switching at this stage of the game. BTW, Rogers broadband is now Rogers-Yahoo and so the broadband part is really Yahoo.
Satellite broadband service is simply not an option. the signal lag is too great because the signal has to go out to the geosynchronous orbit and back.
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