There's no question we've been suffering from a lack of real democratic representation in this country for decades. Even though some of my earliest memories are of a neighbour being elected to Parliament as a Liberal when I was about five(his daughter was my first girlfriend hence my lifelong inability to take anybody who claims the Liberals are evil seriously) I never did buy into Trudeau Mania. While he did help define a Canadian character separate from the Brits and the Americans, the price has been a cult of personality around our PM ever since. Too much hype and too little substance. And while there were too many extremists in the Reform party in my opinion I liked what Manning stood for and Joe Clark has more integrity in his little finger than Chretien has in his whole body.
To me once again we're saddled with just another arrogant, self-interested PM who could care less about what the vast majority believe and in the long term need in the this country. He's too focused on his social conservative agenda and his too-close-for-comfort ties to industry. Even if I didn't believe in the seriousness of climate change(which I do) I still think a PM needs to be more objective and free of obvious conflicts of interest... but that's not likely in this country now or in the forseeable future.
I would have been more than happy to see Steven Harper take the bull by the horns and try to wrestle this country in a different direction politically by repairing some of the serious flaws in our democratic process but instead he's taken us by the balls and tried to squeeze any real will to think independently out of voters. He's taken a page out of the US neo-con manual and turned our political forum into a battlefield to an unprecedented level, with the apparent objective of intimidating and manipulating his way to greater power while doing as little as possible to actually make a real difference to our lives. I know many admire his skill at driving the agenda to favour his own interests at the expense of the overall Parliamentary system and I also understand the Liberals did the same to a degree in the decade before. The difference being when the Liberals took power they really did face a hostile Parliament who's official opposition's main focus was the dismemberment of the country, something most democratic systems aren't really set up to handle. Now the conservatives are taking an even more belicose approach to Parliament than the Liberals did, not with the objective of keeping the country together-which the Liberals just barely managed to do in 1995- but with the singular goal of eliminating any real opposition to their continued control of the country. "Canada's new Government" was notice of new management, "Harper's Government" is notice of new ownership.
Truly we're being hosed once again.
To me once again we're saddled with just another arrogant, self-interested PM who could care less about what the vast majority believe and in the long term need in the this country. He's too focused on his social conservative agenda and his too-close-for-comfort ties to industry. Even if I didn't believe in the seriousness of climate change(which I do) I still think a PM needs to be more objective and free of obvious conflicts of interest... but that's not likely in this country now or in the forseeable future.
I would have been more than happy to see Steven Harper take the bull by the horns and try to wrestle this country in a different direction politically by repairing some of the serious flaws in our democratic process but instead he's taken us by the balls and tried to squeeze any real will to think independently out of voters. He's taken a page out of the US neo-con manual and turned our political forum into a battlefield to an unprecedented level, with the apparent objective of intimidating and manipulating his way to greater power while doing as little as possible to actually make a real difference to our lives. I know many admire his skill at driving the agenda to favour his own interests at the expense of the overall Parliamentary system and I also understand the Liberals did the same to a degree in the decade before. The difference being when the Liberals took power they really did face a hostile Parliament who's official opposition's main focus was the dismemberment of the country, something most democratic systems aren't really set up to handle. Now the conservatives are taking an even more belicose approach to Parliament than the Liberals did, not with the objective of keeping the country together-which the Liberals just barely managed to do in 1995- but with the singular goal of eliminating any real opposition to their continued control of the country. "Canada's new Government" was notice of new management, "Harper's Government" is notice of new ownership.
Truly we're being hosed once again.
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