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Sheila Copps, Stephen Harper, Svend Robinson and Myron Thompson |
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Ring The Dinner Bell...They're All Out To Lunch |
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| Edmonton - Tuesday, October 29, 2002 - by: Ron Thornton | |||||||
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who would |
During my formative years I had a great respect for those who rose to positions of authority. I imagined such people as being honest, trustworthy, and very intelligent. Obviously, to rise to such levels of responsibility, one had to possess such qualities. I mean, who would put an idiot in charge? Still, over time, I am sure my expanding bald pate is as a result of scratching my head in disbelief as much as it is due to any genetic cause. | ||||||
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bunk |
For example, Sheila Copps has come out saying she is in support of Kyoto and those Alberta scientists who are brave enough to say the same. Brave? If my livelihood hinged on keeping those lovely government dollars flowing into my pocket, I might think this whole Kyoto nonsense was a great idea as well. I would think the huge number of scientists who also work and survive on government funding and still claim this whole scheme as being bunk are the truly brave ones. | ||||||
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death |
Copps' boss, our dear Prime Minister, recently came forth with yet another deeply thought out reference, claiming that people could be dying in Canada in thirty years without Kyoto. He might have noted that Canadians have been dying annually over the past thirty years without Kyoto at a rate of about 7per 1000. Even without any net increase in population, we can expect that at least six million Canadians will die due to disease, accident, and old age between now and 2032, to be replaced by the more than ten million who be born over the same time. Still, if Chretien was referring to a possible increase in Canada's death rate, I would think Kyoto's spinoff benefits such as a drastic drop in our standard of living and the destruction of our economy would go a lot further to making his bold prediction a reality. | ||||||
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past |
Then again, what is reality when a good fabrication does the trick? It is time those western industrialists Kyoto wants to kick in the pants answer for their past deeds. They no doubt were responsible for denying my children the chance to see a live dinosaur, caused the inland sea that made my lot ocean front property back in pre-historic times to dry up, allowed glaciers to march across my yard and then allowed them to melt, and provided us with a standard of living that simply allows most of us over forty-five to continue living. Damn them all. | ||||||
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gripes |
If you don't like history, simply rewrite it. Pierre Trudeau helped us to a heaping helping of fictional fodder, transforming us from a single country to dual nation status. Makes sense, if we happened to live in Great Britain, where England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland actually once had kings of their own. Here in Canada, we had a French colony stuck in the North American bush, the home of just 3000 souls in 1663. By the time they became subjects of British King George III a century later, they numbered just 65,000. Their king was Louis XV of France who, unlike Queen Elizabeth II, never set foot on the shores of Nouvelle-France. In fact, it would seem that their success as a people and a society came to fruition over the 240-years since they became British subjects, not before. Whatever gripes Quebec may have, losing their nationhood isn't one of them. | ||||||
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mug |
Losing focus is what Stephen Harper seemed to do with his ill-advised dig at the NDP's Sven Robinson in the House of Commons. It didn't help that the Canadian Alliance leader was already on shaky ground by making a veiled inference that some former Ministers of the Crown were criminals. His reference to newspaper photos of ex-cabinet ministers who been forced to quit as "mug shots" and his comment that | ||||||
"For all I know, they are posted in most of the police stations in the country'' |
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| overstepped parliamentary bounds. When Robinson interjected, Harper commented, | |||||||
"I'm sure the picture of the honourable member for the NDP is posted in much more wonderful places than just police stations." |
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| Apparently, such a comment was an obvious comment on Robinson's homosexuality, though for the life of me I can't imagine what "wonderful places" those pictures might hang in order for anyone to take the comment as a gay jab. It would seem that to insult a gay person is to insult the lifestyle itself. What nonsense. If such a comment was made toward Wild Rose MP Myron Thompson, for example, would it be taken as a gay reference, a bald reference, a former teacher reference, or what? I can tell you that my own picture is posted in more wonderful places than in a police station. Isn't yours? | |||||||
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police |
Even in my own city, the braintrusts are hard at work. Facing a drop in financial investments, Edmonton city council wants to borrow a quarter-of-a-billion for future projects. $21-million for a police station on the south-side is one such ambition, as though a fancy "box-o-cops" in any way fights crime. Some argue the area is big enough to warrant such a shrine, which makes sense in the same way that the community now deserves its own dump. Funny, my postman doesn't seem to have a big fancy postal depot to work out of in my neck of the woods, yet I actually see him out in the community most days. Too bad I very rarely see the police on the streets of my neighbourhood except when it is too late to do much good. I'm afraid absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder or the community grow safer. Police actually patrolling our streets, not wandering the halls of a chateau, will accomplish that. | ||||||
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democratic |
It takes more than wandering through life, but having the ability to question, to debate, and to provide reasonable solutions for one to become an effective bastion of democracy. No wonder under-age kids are challenging the law that prevents them from voting. While it makes absolute sense under common law and tradition to deny them such democratic rights, such things have continually gone out the window since we Canadians were blessed with the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The way I read the Charter, a judge's recent denial of the vote to sixteen-year-olds can be interpreted as being discriminatory. It appears no one thought to include in the Charter anything to do with responsibilities or addressed how children, those mentally incapacitated, or social exiles, such as incarcerated criminals, were not deemed responsible enough to be entrusted with such rights. | ||||||
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competence |
Then again, considering the kind of decision making we've been getting, maybe we should entrust such rights to those who appear to demonstrate the same level of comprehension and competence as those who lead us. My sons are two such people. | ||||||
| Their 8th birthday is next week. | |||||||
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