Demarchy

Okay, so maybe it’s not the end of the world.

You’d think so, though, based on the Twittosphere. 

Two Tory backbenchers are vowing two acts of right-wing idiocy - hacking off the provision of federal hate crime legislation that protects folks from hate speech sent online, and de-funding Planned Parenthood’s international work.

Brian Storseth is the champion of repealing section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. What horrors is he looking to abolish from our totalitarian dystopia?

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So Jim Flaherty is looking for $4 billion in savings across the federal government in the next four years.

Don’t worry, guys, he’s got this shit.

Everyone rub your checkbooks and repeat after me;

Attrition! Efficiency! Cost-saving measures!

These three words have existed since Lyon MacKenzie King was consulting his mother’s ghost on how to offset the cost of creating the NFB. These words have been trotted out at every budget-time like a blue-ribbon Shitzu that can bark out the national anthem.

But they’re total bullshit.

We’ve been told that this graying wave of baby-boomer public servants that have been mulling about the Service Canada offices, just waiting to keel over while someone from the Treasury Board sits atop a nearby desk like a hungry austerity vulture.

Too bad that the bulk of the Baby Boomers have already started retiring. Retirement levels jumped 34%…four years ago. We haven’t seen large-scale cost-saving measures, even though we’ve been practicing attrition pretty much since 2008.

The real peek of the boomers came 62 years ago. If you were born then, you’re old enough to storm out of your Citizenship and Immigration cubicle, hop into your 1994 Oldsmobile and drive twenty minutes until you can’t afford the put gas the tank, then take public transit halfway to your retirement shack and walk the other 30 miles.

Many public servants aren’t sticking around until their wrinkly asses are kicked out the door, no, they’re either taking part-time hours or are leaving with only a portion of their CPP benefits. If JFlaht and TClem thinks they can balance the budget by waiting for the golden oldies to leave, they’ll be waiting beside the cruise-ship shuffleboard court for awhile.

But what about efficiency? When I think efficiency, I think of replacing the Canadian International Development Agency with the Corporate-Handout-tron-3000. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though.

Efficiency is a word touted by starry-eyed governments-in-waiting, while visions of cutting lunchroom sugar-cubes dance in their head. Adorable and admirable thought those thoughts may be, sitting governments realize that finding and getting riding of these millions of itty-bitty costs, in the end, costs more than they save. Cutting isn’t free. You need reports and committees and yadda yadda yadda. The best cost-saving measures are over-arching legislative policy that creates systemic and fundamental changes to the way governments works that doesn’t download the cost onto the people or to provinces.

But it’s a fuck of a lot easier to chant “EFFICENCY!” and wag your dick at the opposition.

And what about the cost-saving measures?

Let me let you in on a little secret; that means cuts. LOTS OF FUCKING CUTS.

That’s where the savings will be. When Tweetin’ Tony picks up his 6-shooter, blindfolds himself and yells “PULL!” - whatever portfolios he hits are going to be gettin’ royally screwed.

CBC? No more Dan For Mayor for you, suckers! “PULL!” BLAM.

Canada Post? So you went on strike, eh? “PULL!” BLAM.

Foreign Aid? Oh wait, that’s already gone.

Yesterday Jimmy sat down on Power and Politics and said - No, we won’t be doing Jean Chrétien-style cuts. Yes, we will be cutting. Yet we’ll somehow do it without touching healthcare or provincial transfer payments.

Uhuh.

Problem is that he has to find a lot more in savings that Jean-boy. Further exacerbating this is that a lot of the departments are already rather lean after the cuts in the 90s. Are they totally efficient? No. Is there room to cut superfluous programs? Yes. Are you going to find $4 bil in 4 years? Not unless you go Liberal and start throwing old folks onto unpaved streets.

Great news, everyone!

Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent time today showing Melanie Renn, a grade-9 student from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, how he serves the people of Canada, as part of the national Take Our Kids to Work Day.

Harper, never one to play by the rules, has bucked tradition and just grabbed some random kid to take to work. Sure better than those brats he has at home. They’re so boooring. This Renn girl, however, is the bees knees.

I bet she gets to look at the Prime Minister’s desk, and glad-hand with all sorts of important beauro-

Miss Renn also attended Question Period after which she spent time with the Speaker of the House.

JESUS CHRIST!

Steve, you let her in Question Period? Like…the one where Brian Mulroney called a Liberal MP a “fucking bastard”? The same jolly get-together that prompted one Tory MP to label Shelia Copps a “slut”? My favourite was when David McGuinty and Peter MacKay acrimoniously agreed that Belinda Stronach was a dog of many masters.

Good times.

But really Steve, I hope you covered her ears when the insults started (or just got her ear plugs.)

As depicted in her winning photograph and short essay submission, Miss Renn’s ultimate dream job is becoming an archaeologist.

How applicable to the House of Commons! Little Miss Renn can poke around the Commons library and unearth documents from when parliament did things. What a fun treasure hunt!

Ooh ooh ooh! I wonder if she made it to the Senate; she could have met some real life dinosaurs!

I bet exposing that lucky little girl to all the partisan hackery while completely shattering her illusion of our functioning democracy really gave her some real-world experience-

And a story for her therapist.

[Harper] scored a fantastic coup when Mr. Teneycke became head, courtesy of Mr. Péladeau, of Sun Media’s political coverage. It’s not every day that a prime minister sees his one-time spokesperson taking control of a giant media chain’s coverage of his government. What, one wonders, will our journalism schools be telling their students about that?

Probably something to do with rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

I have a theory. I don’t think Harper is running to be prime minister anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he’d be just ecstatic if he won again, but I honestly believe Harper has transformed himself in his own eyes. Perhaps buoyed by his teflon polling numbers that very rarely slip below the Liberal’s, or maybe driven by pure boredom with his current position (having to deal with democracy and whatnot) Stephen Harper seems much more intent on radically altering the country than he does in governing it.

This has become strikingly apparent in the past few weeks. I don’t buy that Harper didn’t see any backlash from axing the census, I think he just didn’t care.

Harper is an ideologue. He was the one intent on destroying the Progressive Conservatives because they didn’t believe in his lunacy. His gamble paid off, for sure, but I think he’s become fed up with concessions and diplomacy in recent months. Harper is not a team player, as has become glaringly obvious from his obsessive-compulsive top-down style.

It seems to me that the PM wants to become a Napoleon of Canada. His grip on power is reinforced by his abuse of that power. He seeks to redefine what it means to be Canadian. He wants to set out his own Haperific code.

This code is marked by a distaste and distrust for a perceived threat posed by public services, by a hated for anti-corporate forces and a general disinterest in having any sort of powerful federal government. It is perhaps in that last plank that his own suicide mission takes root. I’m sure the irony hasn’t been lost on his that he is the most fiercely anti-establishment prime minister Canada has had in decades.

Kamikaze Harper wants a legacy. He wants to scrap as many programs as he can. He wants to establish his own radio station, using the PMO as his launching point. He wants to stack government with his allies. Basically, Harper wants to create a neo-Conservative parliament hill that will fight tooth and nail against anyone with a moderate or left-wing agenda. 

Harper won’t need a portrait or a statue inside the House of Commons; the building itself will be the testament to his legacy.

You have got to be shitting me.

I think it’s appropriate to have individual Canadians appear,” said Edmonton-area Conservative MP Mike Lake, the parliamentary secretary to Industry Minister Tony Clement. “They’re the ones that are getting asked the questions and being forced under threat of fines and jail time to answer them, so absolutely it’s appropriate for individual Canadians to appear before committee.”

Mr. Clement has already dismissed the controversy as one that only occupies “some of the elites in our country.” His party appears ready to continue this theme in committee, with a string of appearances from average Canadians.

This political doublespeak has got to stop. It’s nothing more than lightly covered anti-intellectualism. I cannot think of a world leader, save George Bush, so entranced with the idea of ostracizing any professional opinion from policy decisions. When Harper’s cronies say ‘elite’ (as in: “the elites are taking over the country!” or “the elites are trying to turn our kids gay!”) they really just mean “educated people who don’t vote for us.” 

It’s what Harper has been doing for the past four (shudder) years. His environment minister has rejected the consensus on carbon emission targets and has gone to great lengths to scuttle any sort of real climate change deal. His science (!!!) minister believes in intelligent design. And Tony (oh Tony) has railed against any evidence or statistics behind any decision he seems to make. For example, he’s justified his government’s massive new crime program by pointing to a jump in “unreported crime.”

And sure, smarter people tend to vote Liberal, or so says EKOS.

So sure, the intellectual elite, as it were, are more inclined to the Liberals and NDP than their counterparts with just a highschool diploma. It’s not exactly a class war, as the ever-apologetic Andrew Coyne would like to believe.

It’s the overt antagonism to experts, and by extension the educated classes, that marks the Tory style. In its own way, it’s a form of class war.

You can see it in the sneering references to Michael Ignatieff’s Harvard tenure, in the repeated denunciations of “elites” and “intellectuals.” In the partial dismantling of the census, we reach the final stage: not just hostile to experts, but to knowledge.

It’s an old game, in some respects. There are echoes of the Republican “NASCAR dad” strategy, mixed with the High Tories’ instinctive distrust of new ideas and technocratic monkeying about. Not for nothing did the British Conservatives once glory in the title of the Stupid Party, and the Harper Conservatives seem content to wear the label as well.

Full story

While the ever-cynical Contrarian might find Coyne endearing, I find his defense of Harper’s style quite disingenuous. Coyne, may I point out, is one of those intellectual elites. 

A more apt use of the much-maligned term “class divide” might be better suited to point out that the Conservative Party is run, sponsored and supported by the business class of Canada. Other parties, such as the NDP, are supported by activists and families. The Liberals are beholden to old money and old white guys.

That’s an oversimplification, no two ways about it, but it’s an interesting microcosm for Canadian society, and it really shows what selection of Canada Harper plans to go after.

Harper knows he can’t win the highly-educated branch of the Liberal party. He knows that he’ll never knock off the big donors and the hard-core Liberal hotspots. He won’t even try, hence why he holds no reservations about insulting them. What he really wants are those who are afraid of the Tories’ brand of neo-conservativism. The George Bush-style quasi-authoritarianism. Harper hopes to circumvent that by playing to their basic frustrations. Think of it is as Sarah Palin vs. George Bush. If anything, Palin is even more to the right of Bush’s wacky politics, yet she does a better job of trying to connect with individual. By painting Obama as an out-of-touch elitist, she may be able to use reverse psychology on those who would benefit most from Obama’s social policies. It’s the same situation.

Layton better watch his ass, too, because there’s nothing harder than to convince voters that your party, which isn’t in government, is actually getting things done.

While it might be offensive, disingenuous and nasty, the faux-populism just might work out in the end.

Have you heard?

IT’S TIME

Finally, at long last, Canadians can stop being oppressed by this malevolent system that has unduly kept them from their precious guns! No longer will poor hunters and street thugs be denied their god-given right to blow a hole in anything unpleasant (up to and including hippies and unwanted childhood memories.)

And who knows better than Candice Hoeppner? According to an enlightening story by the always delightful Toronto Sun, Hoeppner is just a down-home country girl who’s worried about gangs and women.

“Rural women care about crime. They care about cutting down on crime. They care about drugs getting to their kids,” Hoeppner said. “We’re pragmatic. We’re practical. We believe the best way to combat crime is to actually focus on criminals.”

Full story

There you go! She has it all figured out. Rural women can just shoot drugs, and everything is all better!

The long-guns will also go a long way to resolving domestic disputes,

According to John Edmunds, national president of the Union of Solicitor General Employees component of the PSAC, spousal deaths by guns have been reduced by 50 percent since gun owners were required to register long guns. “The registry allows police to check households for the presence of firearms which is especially important in the case of domestic disputes.”

Full story

We should just let them duke it out! The problem before was that there was only one rifle in most households. If the government were responsible, they’d make sure that both the husband and the wife had one. That way equal numbers of men and women would die.

Feminism, eat your heart out!

Candice also sets up a neat little list of myths vs. facts (it’s like Mythbusters only with more guns!)

Myth #1:

In 2009, it cost $4.1 million to operate the long-gun registry.

Fact #1

Many different numbers have been thrown around. When appearing before the Standing Committee on Public Safety the Canadian Taxpayers Federation gave a number of $106 million per year. (House of Commons Public Safety Committee, May 25, 2010)

Yeah! That’s sooo much money! What a waste! If we cut this we could finance the Afghanistan war for…a couple of days! Or we could have another G20 summit…for 7 hours. Or we could just give it all away in more corporate tax cuts! Someone needs to make more guns, right?

Myth #2:

Michael Ignatieff’s Liberal Proposal to Decriminalize the Long-Gun Registry will help farmers and hunters.

Fact #2

Ignatieff’s proposal to make first-time persons charged with possession of an unregistered firearm simply a summary non-criminal offence is not new. When Bill C-68 was brought forward by Allan Rock in 1995 the Canadian Police Association refused to support the bill without such a provision. Thus, Section 112 was entered into the Firearms Act, making it a “summary offence” to possess an unregistered firearm. (Toronto Star, March 31, 1995)

LIBEERRALLLS! FUCKING LIIIBERRALLLSSSS! I hate Alan Rock so much I once ran over a deer because it looked like him. I ran him over with my gun.

Myth #3:

The Canadian Police Association says their membership is totally supportive of the long-gun registry.

Fact #3:

During Parliamentary hearings into the long-gun registry, the President of the Canadian Police Association, Charles Momy, admitted that less than 1 per cent of his association’s membership responded to a survey supporting the long-gun registry. (House of Commons Public Safety Committee, May 13, 2010)

Yeah! That’s why public polling is crap. You need to contact the majority of people before you get an accurate picture of anything. Gosh, no wonder these statistic-freaks are so upset over the census.

Myth #4

Virtually all police, including all Police Chiefs across Canada, support the long-gun registry.

Fact #4

Many police chiefs and front-line officers have spoken out against the long-gun registry. Rick Hanson, Calgary Police Chief, Evan Bray, Saskatchewan, Sgt/Det Murray Grismer Saskatoon, Sgt. Duane Rutledge – Active Police Officer, Dave Shipman, Mitch McCormick and Jack Tinsley – Winnipeg, retired, Bob Rich Chief of Police Abbotsford Police These are just witnesses, thousands more have supported with phone calls and emails. See Garry Breitkreuz’ s website for what police have said: http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/2010/978.pdf

Eat it, hippies! We have eight policemen who oppose the long-gun registry, which totally trumps the 500 policemen and policewomen who support it!

Myth #5

Police from across Canada access the long-gun registry over 11,000 times a day.

Fact#5

Computer activity does not denote usage. Of the 11,086 computer hits per day in 2009, 7,653 were for a name, 2,842 were for addresses, but a mere 19 were checking a registration certificate…of all types! The vast majority were due to hits automatically generated by a system designed to produce impressive statistics from irrelevant inquiries. (Source: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/facts-faits/archives/quick_facts/2010/mar-eng.htm)

 And they only checked the serial numbers 316 times! That’s not even a gun a day! What a waste of time. You have 7.5 million guns registered and you only look up one a day? More like no-fun registry!

So please, scrap the long-gun registry.

Get in touch with the eight Liberals and the twelve New Democrats and tell them that, when the opportunity comes this fall, scrap that useless registry and allow Canadians to start shooting each other with high-powered shotguns like they used to.

Luckily, Candice set up a nice list for you. One for New Democrats and one for Liberals.

According to the CBC, people have begun throwing spare change into the G20’s Fake Lake.

Apparently these folks feel like their contribution, via their tax dollars, was not enough.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s a great lake. It’s not even the lake I have problems with, per se, it’s the attitude. No, maybe that’s not true either.

I know what it is, it’s the overwhelming security presence in the face of no defined threat and the systemic disregard for civil liberties and freedom of speech. This is a point of view that doesn’t seem to resonate with, surprise surprise, the security personnel,

“If nothing happens around here, that’s a measure of the fact that we have so many officers around to prevent something from happening,” Provincial Police Sgt. Pierre Chamberland told the Vancouver Sun “Prevention is something you can’t measure.”

Logical fallacies aside, it’s hard to pretend like the 20,000 strong police presence in Huntsville (of all places) is necessary. Virtually no one is allowed inside the town itself, so to argue that such a massive force is required wreaks of wasted tax dollars.

Maybe it’s worth dispatching 14% of our nation security forces to deal with the fraction of a percent of the population that will show up to protest; who am I to say? On the other hand, I could always write up a list of things that aren’t a waste of money. Such as;

• The Stephen Lewis Foundation: $3,200,000
• Prison Farm Program: $4,100,000
• Oxfam Canada: $15,000,000
• First Nations University: $25,000,000
• Canadian Cancer Society: $150,718,000
• Greenpeace International: $251,628,114
• Canadian Red Cross: $311,000,000
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: $1,530,000,000

All those worthy causes, and their combined costs are still right around the $2 billion mark that some say these summits will cost the Canadian taxpayer. You could buy the fucking CBC. You know what else you could buy?

Sierra Leone and East Timor, two of the least developed countries in the world.

That $2 billion bucks is also 36 times larger than Canada’s contribution to Haiti after it’s devastating earthquake this year.

And what is the money going towards? At least something useful, right?

Turning to Le Devoir, one reads a report filed by Helene Buzzetti, who also happens to be president of the parliamentary press gallery in Ottawa, under the headline “Harper agrees to Chinese censorship”:

The Conservative government may take a firm line in public statements on the question of human rights, but when the rubber hits the road, it prefers to bend to the Communist government’s demands for censorship. PM Harper’s office agreed to cancel a joint press conference to prevent critical Chinese journalists from participating.

Norman Spector, The G&M

The province has secretly passed an unprecedented regulation that empowers police to arrest anyone near the G20 security zone who refuses to identify themselves or agree to a police search…

…A 31-year-old man has already been arrested under the new regulation, which was quietly passed by the provincial cabinet on June 2.

The regulation was made under Ontario’s Public Works Protection Act and was not debated in the Legislature. According to a provincial spokesperson, the cabinet action came in response to an “extraordinary request” by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, who wanted additional policing powers shortly after learning the G20 was coming to Toronto.

The Toronto Star

Police have added a water cannon to their arsenal as they step up security ahead of this week’s G20 summit in Toronto.

Provincial police Const. Michelle Murphy of the Integrated Security Unit says the water projection system will be used to control large crowds if there are riots…

…“The bike locks. The benches. They’re taking everything,” said a guard at the Court, a popular lunch spot for those working in the nearby bank towers.

The city has removed trash cans, bus shelters and even young saplings from the summit area out of concern the street furniture might be ripped out and used as arsenal by violent protesters.

Toronto Star

A Canadian judge handed protesters of the G20 summit in Toronto a small victory on Friday, restricting the use of a controversial sound cannon for crowd control.

The Ontario judge said that under current Toronto police guidelines, the so-called Long Range Acoustic Device - a super-high-volume loudspeaker - could cause hearing damage if used at certain levels and distances.

Toronto police said they would comply with an order to amend guidelines governing use of the sound cannon, specifically with regards to distance and volume limitations.

Police say the cannons, purchased in recent weeks, will be used for communication. The portable loudspeakers are also known as sonic guns because the volume can be turned up so high they can be used as weapons.

Reuters

So, in the end, isn’t just better to beat the shit out of protesters for reasons that would never fly under normal circumstances? Isn’t it great that we, as a country, are piling debt on our selves that will eventually, knowing Harper’s fun and games, will manifest in service cuts and regressive taxes? Isn’t it comforting knowing that while police roam the streets, itching to take down any kid with an attitude, the global elite get to quietly discuss third world aid and bank taxes, while at the same time dining on, no doubt, obscenely expensive meals while staring across the Fake Lake?

Sarcasm aside, there is sort of a sad irony in that the Fake Lake is probably one of the cleanest spots of water anywhere in Canada at the moment. Between the looming prospect of a Gulf-style oil spill,

Spill response resources in Canada are minimal compared to the scope of the massive multi-agency effort underway in the United States, and the penalties to cover clean up and compensation in Canada also fall short. Oil companies drilling offshore are only liable for $40 million in damages even though the costs will be many times higher. Instead of improving the situation, the Conservatives are gutting the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and handing assessments of energy projects to the industry-friendly National Energy Board.

(via the NDP)

or the contamination at the hands of the out-of-control development in Alberta,

During the process of separating bitumen from the tar sands, large amounts of water are mixed in with the sand, and once the oil has been removed, the leftover mixture of water, sand, clay and residual bitumen - known as tailings - has to be stored in a stable location so that the solution can settle and separate.  The storage facilities are known as tailings ponds.  Because each cubic metre of bitumen extracted results in three to five cubic metres of tailings that need to be stored, the tailings ponds are so enormous they can be seen by the naked eye from outer space.  Other “wastewater” is also stored in human-made holding lagoons such as sewage, water used for cooling, and water that has come into contact with coke, asphaltenes, sulphur, or heavy metals.  This tactic is supposed to prevent the contamination of groundwater and river systems, but there is concern that this is not working properly.

In most mining operations, harsh chemicals are needed to separate the minerals from the sand or rock that they are embedded in.  For example, in gold or copper mining, arsenic and cyanide are often used, so tailings in those operations are extremely poisonous.  In the tar sands, naphtha and paraffin are used, but they are supposed to be separated from the water before it is pumped into the tailings pond.

(via Greenpeace)

And, the kicker, the report by the Canadian Medical Association that points out the unstable safety of drinking water all across the country,

More than 1760 provincial boil-water advisories are currently in effect in communities and neighbourhoods across Canada, prompting calls from national and municipal advocacy groups for a federal and provincial strategy to ensure safe drinking water for all Canadians.

Poor quality drinking water in Canada is often perceived as an issue primarily of concern to First Nations communities; as of Feb. 29, 2008, there were boil-water advisories in place in 93 First Nations

The point is; how can we justify paying this audacious sum of money when we can’t even seem to get our most fundamental natural resource in order? Maybe this government ought to get back to basics and stop spending so much of its resources on a middle eastern war, fighting against an international bank tax or hosting a party for the global bourgeoisie when it could be making a positive impact on the people and environment it’s sworn to protect.

The constitution is a worthless document.

When Canada was founded, the constitution was a pretty integral part of the rule of law and helped enshrine certain liberties into the infallible fabric of Canadian society. Today, though, there are very few opponents to, say, having an interpreter in a court preceding (section 14.) But the purpose of the constitution was pretty powerful, as it is for any fledgling nation. However, to hold the idea that the constitution should just be sealed and locked away is to deny a few important part of our governmental system.

Universal healthcare isn’t in the constitution. The right to education isn’t included. Gay marriage isn’t there. The recognition of transgendered citizens as equal; also not included. This is the outline of our society, to not add to it is a disgrace.

The constitution has not been updated since 1982. Mulroney’s crusade to update the document ended with absolutely disasterous results. Parts still haven’t been ratified Quebec. While an update every couple of decades may seem acceptable, one should keep in mind that the bulk of the amendments dealt with the French language and Aboriginal rights. Important? Definitely, but they should have been added in the 60s. Being years behind the curve of social change is nothing to be proud of.

But why is it important? Most of these things that need protecting are already laws, sure, but in the past four years it’s because evident just how fragile our social fabric is. Stephen Harper has systematically attacked and weakened the very things that the majority of Canadians see as fundamental to our society. The contingent of Canadians who, say, think that gay marriage or abortion should outlawed are an insignificant minority, analogous with those who fought to resegregate the American South in the 1960s. Including these important social triumphs in the constitution will not only ensure that they will not be overturned, but it will enforce their democratic power. By necessitating the support of half the country (the House of Commons, Senate and any combination of premiers that account for half the population) these ideals will gain more legitimacy than, say, a prime minister elected by five million people; a slim minority of the general population.

And damnit, Canada needs a good debate. As a society, we’ve become complacent in our identity. We are no longer the peace-loving, open and accepting society we once were. We’re rejecting a women’s right to choose overseas, sabotaging climate change initiates, contributing to the worst ecological disaster on the planet, giving the cold shoulder to gay pride festivals, etc.

But really, is that us? No. That’s the government. It’s time to check in on the Canadian people. Referendum, anyone?

This is what our prime minister believes is acceptable behind closed doors. His contemptuous tone of voice is demeaning to all the Canadians who voted for anyone besides the Conservative party.

Highlights;

We believe that you go after the people who use guns to commit crimes, we are still trying to get rid of the gun registry. We have the NDP, the Liberals and the Bloque stopping us from even heaving a vote.

Let’s crack down on criminals using guns by getting rid of the system that tracks people with guns. Aah, of course.

I ask you for a minute to imagine how different the things would be if the Liberals were still in power, imagine the bloated bureaucracy their national daycare program would have created and probably not have delivered a single childcare space. Imagine how many left wing ideologues they would be putting in the courts, the federal institutions, agencies, the senate. Rather how many more.

Better right-wing ideologues than left, amirite?

We need to win a majority in the next election. I am not just saying that because we need a few more seats. We saw what happened last year. do not be fooled for a moment. If we do not get a majority, the Liberals, NDP, and the Bloque Quebecois will combine and they will form a government. They will deny this until they are blue in the face during the election campaign, but I guarantee it. If we do not win a majority, this country will have a Liberal government propped up by Socialists and Separatists…

…We have to teach them a lesson, get back there with a majority and teach their little coalition a lesson.

Uh…huh. Despite the fact that more Canadians voted for them than voted for you, Mr. Harper, this is a rather insane assertion. There’s a damn good reason why you haven’t had a majority.