TriumphAnt

I have some free advice for all three Opposition parties. (No, no, don’t thank me.) Ordinarily, I would not presume to think that any advice I have to offer them would be useful but, in the past few days they have shown themselves to be so completely stupid that what I’m about to say will seem like sheer genius compared to what they’ve been doing.

So – here’s the sheer genius.

First, for all of you – Conservatives, NDP, Bloc: The Liberals’ two messages from now until voting day will be: 1. (After the Opposition-fired non-confidence motion is held – whenever “after” should ever happen to be): “We are appalled that the [insert Opposition Party name here] voted against an agenda of progressive and innovative programs that would enhance the quality of life for all Canadians. Shocked and dismayed are we!” and 2. (In the wake of Gomery): “We have really, really, REALLY learned our lesson. Re-elect us.”

And here are your counter-messages. First, to 1. – 1.a “We didn’t vote against the few positive measures you introduced in your 'economic update' on November 14th. As we have made it completely clear, we believe you had lost the moral authority to govern. So we combined resources and voted you out of office the first chance [actually the hundredth, or thereabouts, chance but we can’t travel too far on that gas] we had to vote you out of office.” PERIOD. (Oh, and 1.b: “All of your ‘progressive and innovative programs’, especially tax cuts, you stole from us anyway. So Canadians will lose none of them by electing us.”)

And to 2. “With the exception of a few token rolled heads, you are almost entirely the same team that ran the country when the whole sponsorship scandal was happening. And not only that, the man who, at the time, was the number 2 politician in the country, the number 1 federal politician in Quebec, and the Minister of Finance, today as Prime Minister claims he knew absolutely nothing about the Quebec-based scandal and now expects to be returned to govern because, he says, ‘We have learned our lesson’. Well we don’t believe a bit of it! Vote for us.”

How hard was that? You’re welcome.

STOP THE DAMNED SKATING AROUND WHO’S “OFFICIALLY” GOING TO BE TAGGED WITH PULLING THE PLUG! IF YOU GENUINELY BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT HAS LOST ITS MANDATE, ITS “MORAL AUTHORITY”, THEN VOTE THEM OUT OF OFFICE. THAT’S HOW PARLIAMENT WAS DESIGNED. YOU’RE THE OPPOSITION; SO OPPOSE ALREADY!

Unfortunately, none of that helps me decide where I’m going to mark my “X” when next I stand in a general election booth, because the only thing that the recent political shenanigans dominating the Ottawa news in the past few months has done for me is to make it very, very easy to decide who I’m NOT going to vote for.

The Liberals: no way. And oddly enough, it’s for the weakest of all the “Nope, not voting for you” reasons that are on my list. I am simply sick and tired of their collectively radiating an aura of arrogance that manifests itself as a belief that they rule by divine right of kings. Every once in a while, that boat need to be rocked and I think it’s damn well time to tip it right over.

The Conservatives: no way. At first, I waffled for a bit, thinking “Give ‘em a chance”, when they floundered about looking for (a) a platform; and (b) a leader. But here they are a good couple years along and so far they’ve found neither. Plus they still carry way too many chains connecting them to the really dangerous Reform / Alliance Party. For me, the clincher came in the wake of the recent announcement by Jack Layton that he and his party would not support a motion hinged to any expression of confidence in the Liberal government. In the very next breath, there was Conservative “leader” Stephen Harper announcing that he sure as hell wasn’t going to make that motion, because he didn’t trust the NDP after they failed to support the Conservative motion of non-confidence last time around.

(Uh… Stephen: 1. The NDP last time never pre-announced either support or non-support. So it’s not like they stabbed you in the back. 2. You’re the guy who has been jumping up and down on the soapbox for the past several months shrieking that you will defeat this government at the first available opportunity. Well HERE IT IS, YOU DAMNED STUPID FOOL!)

(Or more PC-ly, and as the Globe and Mail pointed out in an editorial the morning after the Layton announcement, Harper is, after all, the leader of the “Official Opposition”. If indeed he lacks confidence in this government, the role of seizing the opportunity to defeat it is more correctly his than anybody else’s.

To me, Harper has shown himself to be not so much a political party leader as he is the kid in the department store line-up who’s been absolutely a-quiver for the better part of an hour with the anticipation of actually getting to see Santa Claus. Then comes the moment: “HO! HO! HO!... Next!” at which point he pees his pants and runs screaming from the store.

(Stephen Harper: you ARE the weakest link. Goodbye.)

My secret advice for getting you elected: Get yourselves a new leader and throw the rednecks out of your party.

The NDP: no way. In the past few months, Jack Layton proved himself to be every bit the grubby little backroom dealmaker he so publicly condemns in the parties who actually do have the power. When he finally did topple lamely off the fence, it was to announce that it was the Liberals’ failure to “make a commitment to [i.e. adopt NDP policy for] health care in Canada” that lost them his party’s support. Well Jack, plainly you missed the memo, because health care in Canada is a bus with 13 or so steering wheels. For you to honestly believe that you could negotiate the Liberals into adopting major new health care policies without holding a dozen or so federal / provincial / territorial conferences on the subject makes it all too clear you really have no understanding about how politics works (or admittedly, more often doesn’t work) in this country. Back to Toronto with you, Jack. Obviously you’d still got your head there and the rest of country now knows that a party that sells its soul at every available opportunity really has no soul left, does it?

My secret advice for getting you elected: You’re never going to run the country. But you have – as apparently has been long forgotten by your current members – a track record of being a very effective conscience of not only the House, but also the country. (Hint: read everything Stephen Lewis ever wrote and said.) Return to that spotlight. That’s where we need you most and, coincidentally, it’s where you sing the best.

The Bloc: moot point. They don’t run candidates in my riding or anywhere else outside Quebec, for that matter. (But for the record: no way.)

My secret advice for getting you elected: Here’s a novel thought. You’ve won unbelievable federal concessions on federal programs as they are delivered in Quebec. Never has the time been riper for a party that is willing to make a national platform out of “Putting Provinces First”. Think of it: health care and education are this election’s two biggest priorities, and they’re both provincial responsibilities. Were you to run candidates everywhere in the country on the strength of a promise to apply your Quebec-rump energies to benefit every other province in Canada, I can guarantee you we’d be looking at Prime Minister Gilles Duceppe the morning after the vote. You don’t even have to change your name. You’re the BQ and you’re going to honour your roots. (Besides, the New Democratic Party is neither, so running a campaign that doesn’t necessarily reflect your name is not even unique in Canada.)

All of which still doesn’t leave me much, does it? At least I live in an urban riding large enough that there will inevitably be one or two independents plus most of the wingnut parties represented on our slate of candidates come voting day. Family Law? Green? Marxist-Leninist? Decisions, decisions.

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Wow! Does this take me back!

(From the Montreal Gazette, November 5):

- - -

Quebec seizes yellow margarine
Raids turn up 72 tubs. Inspectors descend on four Wal-Marts in Quebec City area
Kevin Dougherty

Agriculture Department inspectors swooped down on four Wal-Mart stores in the Quebec City area yesterday and seized 72 plastic tubs of yellow Becel margarine with an estimated street value of $179.28. The margarine is butter yellow, which makes it illegal for sale in Quebec.
…
Andre Menard, spokesperson for acting agriculture minister Laurent Lessard, said 44 of the contraband margarine containers were seized at the Levis Wal-Mart, across the river from the capital.
…
"This is serious," Arseneau chided reporters who found the situation humorous.
…
The company denied yesterday it is using backdoor tactics to flood the Quebec market with illegal margarine.
…
Menard noted the PQ considered lifting the ban in 1997, when they were in power, then backed off. Quebec's powerful farmers' union - the Union des producteurs agricoles - is a strong defender of the ban. Yesterday, Menard said Quebec has no intention of lowering its guard and allowing yellow margarine to infiltrate Quebec grocery stores. "There is nothing (like lifting the ban) on the radar," he said. "Period."

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I recall my Mom, back about 1964, coming home from the Steinberg’s grocery store that was close to the St Hubert, Quebec RCAF base where we lived. Among her groceries were one-pound blocks of what looked like pure lard. But inside the foil wrapper, there was always a little card to which was adhered a quarter-sized button of an unnaturally orange food dye.

She would leave the brick outside the refrigerator for a couple hours or so to soften it and then initiate an operation that involved bursting open the button of colouring, and smushing it up with the lard-coloured substance to produce a more or less uniformly and faintly yellowish-orange coloured spread.

For us, it was a huge technological leap forward when pre-softened white margarine came in a reinforced plastic bag with the button of colouring on the inside. Then, as though engaging in some weirdly tactile ritual of therapy aimed at relieving sexual tension, we would begin by squeezing the bag with thumbs on the colour button to burst it, after which a solid few minutes of kneading the bag would be required to spread the colour evenly throughout the bag of margarine.

That has been – since time immemorial – the idiotic business of purchasing margarine in the province of Quebec.

As the Gazette article above makes it clear, the Quebec government believes – and had believed ever since that first prototypical batch of artificial toast grease was produced – that every last one of its citizens is so abominably stupid, he or she will see a label that spells out the word “m-a-r-g-a-r-i-n-e” and, merely because it is yellow, mistake it for butter. The province’s dairy industry, they reasoned, was therefore in imminent danger of collapse because a tidal wave of grocery shoppers would mistakenly lob “M-A-R-G-A-R-I-N-E” labelled packages into their carts, having completely overlooked the butter blocks nearby. It was time, they concluded, for a protective government to take control.

And so desperately protective are they of this belief in the consumeristic illiteracy of its populace that they have never changed the white-margarine-only-in-this-province law.

Which leads to news stories (above, QED) filled with stupefyingly dumb phrases like “contraband margarine containers”, “margarine with an estimated street value of…”, and the ultimate terrorist threat implied in: “lowering its guard and allowing yellow margarine to infiltrate Quebec grocery stores”.

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Surveys “r” Us reports

Every ten years or so, Statistics Canada puts out a massive survey on the state of literacy in Canada. This year, the report shows that, essentially, not much has changed in the decade since the last survey was published in 1994.

But what really made me wonder was this sentence in a CanWest News Service article about the results: “Some groups fared worse than others in terms of reading comprehension. The survey found immigrants and aboriginal people – particularly those whose first language isn’t English or French – have some of the poorest literacy skills in the country.”

So… let me see if I understand this correctly. A survey form printed in one or both of Canada’s two official languages makes its way into the hands of people who speak neither, and Statistics Canada concludes they are illiterate because they can’t read it?

That approach to the Scientific Method reminds me of the old Cold War joke about a Soviet scientist performing a rather cruel experiment with a grasshopper. He begins by positioning himself behind the hapless bug and yelling at it suddenly to make it jump. The scientist dutifully notes the length of the jump. Next, he removes a leg from the grasshopper and repeats the exercise. Not surprisingly, the startled bug’s jump is not nearly as far. The scientist repeats the experiment with the leg count reduced by one each time. And even with only one leg, the grasshopper still manages an admittedly pathetic change in position when the scientist yells. Finally, the last leg is removed. Despite repeated shouts, the grasshopper doesn’t budge. The next morning, the scientist’s report is dispatched to Moscow for publication in the Soviet science journals. His conclusion? “Grasshopper with no legs is deaf”.

StatsCan’s result: “Person who can’t speak English or French is illiterate.”

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And finally… Headscratching Days Have Arrived at Red Lobster

I just saw a commercial for Red Lobster restaurants on TV. They are in the throes of an annual shellfish pigout called “Endless Shrimp”. The tag line was, “But you’d better hurry, because Endless Shrimp ends soon.”

Memo to Red Lobster: if it does, then it isn’t. See what I’m saying?

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