It is Halloween and the Conservative Party of Canada is gathering in its spiritual home of Calgary to pay obeisance to its liege lord and to drink of the wine of power. The keynote speech will now be Friday evening. Prime Minister Stephen Harper will take the floor sometime after five pm MDT. It will be his role to continue the tradition of the plains Indians to count coup against the Conservatives’ enemies.
Harper will put the troubles of the last two weeks behind him. He is there to revel in his victory in the possibility of European free trade. And besides, Senators Brazeau, Duffy and Wallin are not really expected to attend the convention.
The speech will be a fulsome report on the excellence of his stewardship of the Canadian economy. He will probably forget to mention the hit Hamilton just took as the once proud Stelco Hilton Works closes its blast furnace forever. Mr. Harper does not interfere with business decisions or even their promises, he will tell you.
But he still has his work cut out for him in helping TransCanada Pipelines get the Keystone XL pipeline through the American Midwest to the Texas Gulf coast. He will, hopefully, not take credit for the Enbridge Line 9B pipeline solution to moving Alberta tar sands product through Toronto before the National Energy Board announces it. And if those solutions do not come about, there are still the pipelines across the Rockies and another eastern pipeline to promote.
Some of the wheat farmers in his audience will be of mixed emotions when he takes the credit for killing the Canada Wheat Board. The farmers know that the Wheat Board will be sorely missed.
The cheers will be genuine when he tells the gun enthusiasts in the crowd that he got rid of the gun registry. Maybe they can go out and celebrate later by shooting somebody.
But Stephen Harper should not be smiling when he tells his audience how he has wrestled the lavish spending in Ottawa to the ground. If he thinks he can end the deficit by not spending monies that Parliament had approved to be spent, it is a far more serious lie to Canadians than the cover up in his office on his favourite Senators’ expenses.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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