While enjoying the bright sunlight flooding the clutter of my den, it is the reminder that winter is not over that depresses. The Olympic glow fades gradually with the passing days. The ice huts still mar the beauty of the frozen Kempenfelt Bay. Icy barriers warn off the wary driver from access to puddled sidewalks. It is a false spring.
It must be a false spring in Ottawa also. A fractious House of Commons has resumed in raucous session. The Speech from the Throne Wednesday was a litany of promises of the righteous right. The banal comments from the Opposition were predictable and spurious. It is unlikely that the ice has gone from the Rideau Canal. There are more days left for the national capitol skaters. There are fewer days left for Mr. Harper and his motley crew. He has loaded the Senate with hacks and has-beens in hopes of passing more so-there legislation to please the Wild Rose malcontents of Alberta.
But then, we are struck by the firm hand of Jim Flaherty, master of the castle treasure. He emerges occasionally from deep in the castle keep to breath some pure air, buy shoes and propose the spending of the nation.
Flaherty proposes a budget that is a pot-pourri of slogans, slanders and sloppy accounting. The voters are offered the carryovers from the carryovers as the inadequacies of his budgeting processes are exposed. His lack of foresight, his lack of economic planning, his lack of imagination and his right-wing ideology have prevented him from offering anything but small solutions to our big problems. There were no answers for the problems with Employment Insurance, a pittance for families, no solutions for daycare and no help for our suffering environment.
But there was some help for friends in business. Reducing regulation spells a future of litigation as industry runs rampant in the tradition of Michael Harris’ Ontario.
And where is Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition? They are hiding behind the curtains of the House of Commons, in fear that their negative attitudes should accidently cause an election. They are fiercely sure that they do not support Flaherty’s machinations. They are fiercely sure they will not support his solutions. They live in fear that they will accidently bring down the government. They are, as a collective, as disgusting as Mr. Harper’s crew of rednecks.
God, is it not great to be a Canadian in this false spring?
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