You have to admit, the Conservative Party of Canada makes it look easy. You want a Conservative candidate for the coming federal election? You get one appointed from Ottawa. It could not be simpler. No fuss, no muss, no lawsuits, not like the Liberal Party.
Our new federal riding of Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte has a home-grown young nebbish ready and willing to be the popular choice to go to Ottawa to and do nothing. It’s something of a tradition with Babel Conservatives. They were all weaned on Gilbert and Sullivan’s song on how you get to be ruler of the Queen’s Navy. You “go to parliament at your party’s call, and never ever think for yourself at all.”
And they have the perfect young gentleman for that. He would have been the Conservative candidate in the 2011 provincial election but he made the mistake of paying for his supporters’ memberships with sequence-numbered bills from the bank where he worked at that time. He lost that nomination and soon left that somewhat embarrassed bank for one of its competitors.
But this young gentleman has ambition. He really wants to go to Ottawa and will not be satisfied with just seeing the changing of the guard ceremony on Parliament Hill. He wants to live dangerously off the taxpayers. He wants to be self important. He has prepared himself with two terms on city council, doing nothing there and, when talking, confusing everybody.
But, hold everything! The news is that the nebbish might have some tough competition from the Liberal Party. The other day we signed the nomination application for Trevor Owen, a Babel lawyer, who works with his father’s law firm on Owen Street here in Babel. We know Trevor to be bright, have wit and ideas and a charming wife. He would not go to Ottawa to sit quietly in the back benches and only vote at his party’s call.
But we will not be happy if Trevor Owen is similarly appointed by the Liberal Party. We want a competition. We want choice. We want dialogue about the needs of this riding and how best to represent it in Ottawa. We believe citizens of Babel deserve no less.
Maybe the name of the political party should be removed from the ballot once again so that the people who vote have to vote for the best person first. Would that not be a novel way to do things? With Babel to be split down the middle in the coming federal election, it will never do for us to elect two useless MPs.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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