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Canadian Politics are Boring: A Gleam of Exciting News

Exciting, being a relative term.  What makes me get all lathered up in anticipation may not exactly turn your dials to eleven.  In this case it’s the prospect that Steven Harper gets out the Trash Talk Thesaurus and lays it on the table in front of him, looking for synonyms of pansy.

“He is certainly the Liberal leader who’s taken his party furthest to the left, at least since [former prime minister] Pierre Trudeau,” Mr. Harper said in Inuvik.

“I think this is not a time to go back to Trudeau-style economic policies,” said the Conservative Leader, who invoked Mr. Trudeau’s name three times in unfavorable comparisons with Mr. Dion.
Harper uses Trudeau’s name to slam Dion

Who knew that Pierre Trudeau was an insult?  Almost universally beloved and the scion of a semi-independent Canada?  Nice.  Celine could only hope to be so beloved.  Pierre was a rock-n-roll Prime Minister if there ever was one and stood Canada out there on the International stage like the prize winning pig that it is.  Let’s hope that the Liberals can front a face as audacious and raucous.

The most common definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of shrinking economic output, but Mr. Harper said this wouldn’t worry him because it would only be a “technical recession,” while Canada’s outlook is strong.
–Stephen Harper on the looming global recession.

I’m still trying to find my way here in Canada; faced with the choice of working two jobs or cutting back spending to my post-college levels to get myself back on track.  There are luxuries that I simply can’t afford, like new shirts for work and gas, and I make a decent wage, well above that of some of my peers.  The Job market is terrible for somone with my skill set and it only seems to get worse as time goes on.  I guess the “fundamentals” are okay in the Tories eyes, profits at their friend’s businessess are up, right?

It’s startling to see how far the Canadian public is willing to let the Tory government get before they start to realize that the Cut Taxes and Spend method of Fiscal Conservatives always leads to trouble that the Liberals end up cleaning up.  Taxes always climb in the wake of the Conservative misadventures (see post-Vietnam, Post-Cold-War, Post Bush America for proof)  because the “Conservatives” only believe in spending and cutting taxes, not shoring up for the future.  They can’t even plan a full year in advance (look at the Tories previous push for “set” election dates and their current push for a fall election, a full year early).

It’s typical.

Update:

Dear Stephan Dion

Sic ’em

The Canadian government strongly opposed tougher U.S. rules to prevent listeria and lobbied the United States to accept Canada’s more lenient standards, internal documents reveal.

Briefing notes prepared by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for an April 7, 2006, meeting with the board of directors of the Canadian Meat Council outline how both industry and the Canadian government were frustrated with the increased precautions the United States was demanding.

Specifically, Canada opposed daily inspection visits and the testing of finished products for Listeria monocytogenes.

For your notes at home, The Harper Tories took over in February 6 2006.

Published inPolitics