another Remembrance Day has come and gone. That’s the day when we honour those Canadians who risked or sacrificed their lives so that we can have fair and democratic elections that nobody seems to want to have.
Never too far removed from being labelled farcical, what passes for federal politics is now consumed with which opposition party will do what, with whom and when. Various scenarios and combinations as to when the Liberals can be brought down have dominated the political scene. NDP leader Jack Layton’s harangues about how corrupt the Liberals are while attempting to make a deal with them at the same time is worthy of a made-in-Canada sit-com that could rival Corner Gas.
If all that wasn’t enough, last Thursday Prime Minister Paul Martin announced with pride that he is going to govern and let the other political parties play politics. The implication of Martin’s statement is that he, much like former Governor-General adrienne Clarkson, is above politics. No playing politics for his party; they only provide good government to Canadians.
Hockey players never deny playing hockey when they score a goal. Yet politicians like Martin try to say that politics never enters the picture in anything they do.
It shouldn’t come as a great surprise that when the leader of the most corrupt government in Canada’s history says he isn’t playing politics, that answer is somewhat less than honest. Paul Martin is a politician; his ability to play politics is the reason that he lives at 24 Sussex Drive and makes the big bucks. after all, he didn’t get to be prime minister because of good looks or the fact that he graduated magna cum laude from prime minister school. Denials that politicians like Martin do anything political is one reason that on a scale of occupations, they rank at the bottom along with lawyers and contract killers.
Martin and his Liberals are most certainly playing politics in everything they do. His struggle to keep his corrupt government from falling has nothing to do with benefiting Canadians; it’s all about delaying the election until such time as the Liberals can be in a position to get a majority. The Liberals feel that they deserve to have a majority. Martin will most certainly lose the job that he has coveted for so long if the Liberals end up with anything less.
Everything that the Liberals are doing is being done for political purposes. Martin’s statement that only the other parties are playing politics is ludicrous, even for the former finance minister who saw nothing and heard nothing while the sponsorship scandal was in full swing. The government has had 12 years to get things done; now all of a sudden the country will fall apart if the Natural Governing Party isn’t kept in office to deal with the environment, health care and aboriginal issues.
The politicking that the Liberals are now engaged in goes well beyond the normal pre-election goodies that governments dish out in an attempt to maintain power. Examples can be found of how the Liberals are panicking over the possibility of going down when the country next goes to the polls.
as the use of illegal handguns have increased in Toronto and other urban areas, there have been calls for tougher sentencing including more and increased mandatory minimums. With a sneer, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler has condescendingly dismissed his critics by pronouncing that mandatory minimums are not effective and his government would not be introducing them. Now, with the Liberals getting queasy about losing Liberal-strong urban areas where violent crime is rampant, Cotler has done an about face. He’s now in favour of introducing harsher sentences including mandatory minimums so that Parliament can send a message. The great human rights lawyer now wants to deprive people of their liberty for a longer period of time so that Parliament can tell them something. He still doesn’t believe that they act as a deterrent to crime, but hey, the Liberals have to get re-elected. But the Liberals, of course do not play politics.
and it’s been 60 years since the end of World War II, yet Paul Martin has just signed a deal giving Italian-Canadians $2.5 million as compensation for the fact that some Canadians of Italian origin were detained during the war. Paul Martin doesn’t play politics, so this must just be a coincidence. It has nothing to do with not being able to buy Jack and the NDP so he decided to buy Italian-Canadians. No, only the opposition parties would do that. They’re the ones who are playing politics.
The sad thing is that when Paul Martin announces that a doom and gloom scenario will result if an election is called and says that only the other parties play politics, too many people, especially in Ontario, believe him.