Listening to the throne speech reading by the Governor General yesterday was a sad occasion. It reminds you of one of your youngsters who had so much relaxing to do over the summer that he never did get around to that one school assignment. The government prorogued Parliament for an extra month to write this?
It is a desperation document. It is platitudes piled high. You could only feel sorry for David Johnson for having to read all roughly 7000 words. It was overly long and tortuous, winding its way to nowhere. As happens when you are writing things at different times, the end result is no theme, no cohesion, no easy read. It is disjointed and poorly structured. No passing mark for it.
But that does not matter. The truth be understood that this is what this government might do if nothing more interesting comes along. These are suggestions, not promises.
Yup, they say they are going to do something about mobile roaming charges. If you were impressed that your cell phone worked a thousand kilometres from home, why were you not equally impressed with the roaming charges? And if you were dumb and continued using the cell phone, you deserved the consequences. Yet, here is the Governor General sitting there saying something like “My government is also going to help stupid people by lowering roaming charges.” How this will work, we have no idea.
Even more complex is the problem of pandering to consumers by arranging for you to pay just for the television channels you watch on cable or satellite. This has been under discussion with the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission for quite a few years. What nobody has solved yet are the pricing problems.
You will notice that none of these generous proposals are going to cost the government. Of course, the government wants to send people to jail forever, which can cost, but luckily, there are fewer criminals to send there.
And, despite the seriousness of the problem, do not hold your breath for the government to solve cyber bullying. If you can even define it clearly enough, how do you police it and bring it to court without threatening our freedoms? Sure, obvious cases have to be stopped but what about the more subtle ones?
If this was the retooling Mr. Harper thinks will spell a continued majority, he is whistling in the wind. He is a lame duck, limping towards the end of his career.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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