By Arthur Weinreb
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Canada'srole in the war in Afghanistan was chosen as the top Canadian news story of2006. In the annual poll of news editors and broadcasters, conducted by theCanadian Press and Broadcast News, the war was chosen by an overwhelming marginas the year's top story. The Afghan conflict garnered 91 votes, far ahead ofthe 44 votes that went to the second place story – the election ofStephen Harper and the Conservatives last January.
Thereseems to be some surprise that the war bested the election and other events tobecome the top story of 2006. As noted historian Jack Granatstein pointed out,the vast majority of Canadians are totally unaffected by what is happening inAfghanistan except for the fact that they feel bad whenever a soldier is killedin action. The war really doesn't affect our daily lives except for those whoserve in the military and those who are close to them. Granatstein went on tonote what seems to have been forgotten while this campaign has been going on.The war is a small one, even by Canadian standards and the country has incurredheavier losses in peacekeeping missions which, contrary to the presentsituation, went virtually unnoticed by Canadians. The historian thought thatthe election of Stephen Harper that saw the Liberals booted out of office wasthe number one news story of the year.
Butit should really come as no surprise that the change in government was not thetop news story. Despite that fact that Canada, in the general scheme of thingsis a well functioning democracy, we are essentially a one party state. It hasbeen a long time since any federal party actually won an election. All partieslose them and the way that the system works, the party that loses the leastgets the opportunity to govern. This past election certainly was no different.We are a Liberal and liberal country that from time to time sees the need topunish the Natural Governing Party by giving them, in the trendy vernacular ofthe day, a time-out. When a new leader is chosen by a federal party (other thanthe Bloc Quebecois) that leader is inevitably introduced as "the next primeminister of Canada". But when the Liberals choose a new leader as they recentlydid in Montreal and they describe that leader as the next prime minister ofCanada, they really mean it. Is there anyone who actually looks at StphaneDion that doesn't see him as the prime minister-in-waiting? Not very likely.The country that prides itself in tolerance and diversity has little tolerancefor the diverse ideas that conservatism brings, even the watered down versionthat is practiced by Stephen Harper and his government.
Thetruth is that we have it pretty good in this country and even the media elitesacknowledge this by not finding that the election of the evil right-wingStephen Harper who is nothing more than a George Bush clone as prime ministerwas last year's top news story. The left wing media such as the Toronto Starand the CBC, with endless victims being constantly paraded on its pages and onits screens in the end found that the election of the Conservative governmentis not the top story of the past year. The fact that there is no universaldaycare program that the Liberals talked about for 12 years but were reallygoing to implement this time had they been re-elected or the fact that theConservatives sent women back to the stone age by gutting the Status of Women,is suddenly not as important as the war in Afghanistan.
Thosein the media who voted for the war as the top story didn't even buy their ownhype about Scary Stephen and his neo-con government. Come to think about it,neither did Canadians.
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