By Arthur Weinreb
Monday, August 27, 2007
If the federal Liberal Party, together with their provincial cousins in Ontario are known for anything (besides corruption and making sure their friends are looked after) it is that they have never really come up with any substantial policy ideas. Most of Canada's major social programs; the ones that separate us from, you know, "those people" south of the border originated with the CCF, the predecessor to the current NDP. Whenever they had an idea for socialized this or subsidized that, the Liberals would see which way the wind was blowing and if the breeze was favourable the Libs would water down the proposal to make it acceptable to their mushy middle base, pass the legislation and take all the credit.
During the early 1990s, after third party U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot discovered the deficit, the Liberals even began stealing policies from the Reform Party who had gained seats during one of the rare times when Canada actually had a mainstream small "c" conservative party that held seats in Parliament. Then-Liberal finance minister Paul Martin began slashing pretty well everything in sight to reduce the deficit.
But Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant has done what no other Liberal has done before -- he's stealing ideas from the Rhinoceros Party.
The Rhinoceros Party was active in Canada between the 1960s and the 80s. Named in honour of a rhinoceros who lived just outside of Montreal and who was mentally slow and sat around in the mud all day, the party managed to do quite well although they never won a seat. The Rhinos surprisingly had a lot of second place finishes in Quebec during the 1984 general election that saw Brian Mulroney sweep to power. Policies of the Rhinceros Party included repealing the law of gravity and legalizing pot as well as pans and other kitchen utensils.
The early 1980s was a time when the economy was in the dumper, interest rates were high and unemployment was spiraling. Like all other political parties, the Rhinos had a policy to put jobless Canadians back to work. The Rhinoceros Party had the good sense to foresee what would happen if everyone suddenly got a job. If everyone who wanted to work had a job no one would be applying for unemployment insurance and so the government employees who worked in the unemployment area would end up being laid off. They would become unemployed but there would be no one left to process their claims, a scenario that the Rhinos found to be an untenable situation. So the party proposed that unemployment in Canada be substantially increased so that people could be put back to work processing unemployment insurance claims.
Fast forward to the present. Michael Bryant came under attack last week after the Progressive Conservatives revealed that his ministry spent approximately $700,000 so that the province's judges and crown attorneys could go on "retreats" that were held at luxury resorts in northern Ontario. These "meetings" of course could have been held at provincially owned or controlled facilities. But that's no fun and it's only the taxpayers' money.
Bryant was furious and came on like a pit bull although he would never describe it that way lest he have to have himself put down. He described John Tory as being "dumb and dumber" (Note to Michael; either he's dumb or he's dumber but he can't be both. Then again, if you look at his faith based school funding policy perhaps you're right, but I digress). According to the Attorney General Tory's idea was dumb because these resorts were both located in ridings held by the Conservatives and these conferences created jobs and were good for the economy. Bryant demanded that Tory apologize to those who would be affected by the lack of government largesse. This was pure Rhinoceros Party logic. We can expect Bryant to soon be sporting a button saying, "No conferences, no jobs". Should the Liberals be re-elected on October 10, perhaps we will see even more money spent on conferences and retreats at fancy resorts. After all, we just have to keep the economy growing. This is scary stuff.
There is one major difference between the policy of the former Rhinoceros Party and Michael Bryant. The Rhinos were only kidding; Bryant unfortunately is serious.
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