Can I borrow this one?
Posted on 12/01/2005 11:25:31 AM PST by GMMAC
Winnipeg Sun
Thursday, December 1, 2005
Not often we get a second chance
By JOHN GLEESON
The Mulroney Conservatives went down in flames because they failed the country. In the early '90s, Canada's economy was in a bitter recession and all Brian Mulroney could do was try to win a constitutional pact to "get Quebec into Canada" -- and, not incidentally, to get Mulroney into the history books as the prime minister who made it happen.
The pragmatic virtues of free trade can be disputed but there was no mistaking Brian's failed obsession with Quebec or his legacy to every Canadian consumer -- the GST.
Mulroney bailed, but the 1993 election cost the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada its very life.
Two seats. That's what Canadian voters gave Brian. One for each cheek.
Prior to last year's federal election, Auditor General Sheila Fraser made it shockingly clear that the Chretien Liberals had failed the country. She revealed that a criminal enterprise defrauding tens of millions of tax dollars had been operating for some seven years out of the Prime Minister's Office, breaking "every rule in the book," with the booty in some cases flowing directly into Liberal party coffers.
One can debate the Liberals' secular-socialist values, their policies and positions -- but there was no mistaking the corruption that flowed downhill from the highest office in the land, polluting the public service at the topmost level, or the still unmeasured legacy it created in the form of resurgent Quebec nationalism.
Chretien bailed, and then Canadian voters did something inexplicable.
Rather than letting go with both barrels, as they did in '93, voters actually re-elected the same party to continue governing the country and to "get to the bottom" of the very kickback scandal that party had perpetrated.
Quebecers know their Liberal party well -- and they know that whatever "differences" exist between Chretien and Martin are minor compared with the common bond of both being at the helm when the plundering was going full-tilt.
More easily duped, Anglo voters, particularly those in Ontario, swallowed the party spin -- still being put out there even by "defectors" like Sheila Copps -- that Chretien and Martin were sworn enemies.
As predicted in this column prior to the 2004 vote, Martin's primary purpose after assuming leadership was to do a cleaning job that would clear both him and his former boss of any legal culpability for the massive fraud of Canadian taxpayers known as AdScam. Martin hand-picked a Liberal appointee from Montreal, Judge John Gomery, whose first report laughably portrayed Chretien as morally but not criminally responsible and of course found Martin innocent as a lamb.
Even so, the testimony heard during the Gomery inquiry was damning enough to the Liberal party as a whole -- kickbacks, bagmen, collective amnesia -- that all three opposition parties were perfectly within their rights to bring down the minority Liberal government this week.
What was the message Canadian voters gave to politicians in the June 2004 election? It was this. You can steal untold millions of our dollars in the name of "national unity" and we'll let you not only get away with it, but we'll put you in charge of getting to the bottom of it, too.
All you have to do is lie convincingly, look like you care, and dip your toes in two oceans.
Canadian voters now have that rare thing in life: a second chance.
They can tell politicians that they want, expect and demand honest government -- and that if a political party fails to deliver, they will be heaved from office like a sack of rotten meat.
Or they can be had all over again.
In 1993 Canadians wisely deemed the Mulroney/Campbell Tories to be screw-ups of epic proportions and obliterated them accordingly.
Maybe now, maybe just enough Canadians will judge the Chretien/Martin Liberals as something even more objectionable than screw-ups and give them the electoral beating they so richly deserve.
We've got 54 days left to hear 8,000 lies.
Be careful and vote honest.
John Gleeson is the editor of the Winnipeg Sun.
He can be reached by e-mail at: jgleeson@wpgsun.com
Letters to the editor should be sent to eletters@wpgsun.com
Many of them vote Conservative.
That will just solidify our hold on Oxford - 1 1/2 hours from Toronto but politically a world away...
Harper did a sit down interview on our local TV station yesterday.
The interveiwer, with a puzzled look on his face, asked him why he brought up same-sex marriage on the first day of the campaign.
Harper replied that the first question he received from the media was about the issue.
He continued, not arguing the merits of either side of the issue, only stating that the matter would be put to a free vote in the commons.
I thought he handled it pretty well.
Yep, 2004 results...CPC 44.9%, Libs 30.5%
I driving across the top of London (Middlesex—Kent—Lambton)yesterday
and saw many signs for Bev Shipley.
Looks like our folks were quickly out of the gate.
Definite chance there,
in 2004... Libs 39.7, CPC 39.4% a difference of 164 votes.
Good site here with all the 2004 results.
Can I borrow this one?
The only reasons we lost there was because the Liberals had a Liberal-in-name-only, and the Christian Heritage Party (think Constitution Party) had over 1,000 votes...
This time, the Liberals have a Dithers pawn. We're taking that seat back.
Meanwhile I'm writing Stephen 100 times on the blackboard.
Perhaps the immigrants could be made to understand that THEY are getting robbed also. I am well aware that there is not much of a middle in Ontario.
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