The federal Finance Minister was spreading nothing more than germs at the Meech Lake meeting yesterday. He was probably high on amphetamines, his nasal passages completely blocked and one step away from falling down, only wishing he was dead. He probably should not have been there. It was not a medical emergency but he was not there with his provincial counterparts spreading joy.
Looking like a bloated leprechaun, Jim Flaherty gave the provincial finance ministers nothing more than his cold. It was a rude way to say Merry Christmas. They came to discuss the need for improvements in the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and the conversation would have gone better without Flaherty.
But any provincial minister at the event knew before it got dubiously underway, that it was going to go nowhere. They were talking to a federal government that has made it very clear that they are not their brother’s keeper, they are certainly not there to look after the indolent, the unparsimonious, or feed their hungry children. With his wheezing, straining voice, Jim Flaherty complained that there was no consensus in the conference room with him and his fellow finance ministers. He said it was really all their fault and a waste of time.
And that produced the only good thing about the meeting. Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa finally did what we have been asking him to do since he was anointed to the finance ministry by Premier Kathleen Wynne. He got up on his hind legs and blew back. He did not say that Flaherty was full of crap but that was the gist of it. He even said that Ontario would go ahead and fix the problem in that province with or without the federal government participation.
All of that is about as likely as three moons in the sky next month but it sure sounded good to this weary Liberal. Poor Sousa would have to fight his way through a lot of deadbeats in cabinet before winning a clear promise of a decent supplement to the CPP. There are just too many unreformed Whigs in the Ontario Cabinet for that kind of hit on the provincial spending.
Why did Charles Sousa’s actions remind us of a story of an old buzzard who threw open a window Christmas morning and got a passing kid to go and get a goose for the Cratchit’s? That was just a story.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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