In the annals of Canadian general elections, 2015 will go down as an original. There are many reasons for this but some stand out more than others; these are my top picks:
- ADVANCE NOTICE OF ELECTION DATEFor the first time in our history we have a Prime Minister with the courage and commitment to put his government on the line four years in advance with a firm election date. This action creates a vulnerability to any standing government unlike anything we’ve ever seen in recent times because it puts everything up for grabs despite what might be on the table to cause embarrassment. It’s a “damn the torpedoes” approach that’s refreshing and courageous on the part of Mr. Harper.
Much like the USA presidential race this policy gives the electorate complete freedom to be prepared with no surprise election call; no process could be more democratic and transparent as most would agree. Despite this the Liberals and NDP chose to find fault with the timing of the election writ under the ruse that the cost of a longer campaign was a waste of money; in other words they won’t acknowledge the needs of the electorate to have ample time to weigh in on the policies of the day, so for them, Canadians were not worth it. They like to talk the hollow “change word” in almost every commercial break but the joke’s on them as Mr. Harper has walked the talk having already wrought historic change with this move.
- MORAL TURPITUDE TRUMPS POLICY DISCUSSIONI cannot recall ever witnessing such disgraceful, personal vitriol being weighed on a standing Prime Minister by his opponents during an election campaign as the disgusting monikers being attributed to Mr. Harper by Messrs. Mulcair and Trudeau. Instead of laying out policy options to intelligently debate the choices they see for the electorate they continually embellish everything they say with this nonsense which only serves to personify their moral turpitude with their baseless hyperbole. Spewing forth accusations such as “the politics of fear and division”, “fear- mongering” and other caveman evils they obviously don’t have enough grey-matter between their ears to see the irony in their epithets of grandeur which in effect casts aspersions on their own character. Worse, they use this strategy because they assume the average Canadian is an idiot that cannot see through their nonsense and so conclude that their poisonous personal characterizations will be accepted as fact by what they consider to be the mindless masses that will fall in line as in the Pied Piper syndrome.
We’ve even witnessed some Cabinet Ministers similarly abused such as when Mulcair bad-mouthed the attributes of Mr. Oliver on his appointment as Finance Minister after the tragic death of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. If a conservative bullied a liberal with such personal characterizations you’d never hear the end of the caterwauling from their insider ranks , lavishly embellished by the patronizing Canadian Media Party. This media disease we suffer knows no bounds as we’ve witnessed, for example, with the silly pro-niqab propaganda machine that even saw the CBC show press cartoons on this debate on the National News; I guess the fear of the Mansbridge team was that most folks don’t read newspapers any more so they need Canadian taxpayer- funded “ TV news” to show em the way. As well, sycophantic liberal columnists excel at hostile outbursts on a personal level as exemplified by liberal backroom- boy Warren Kinsella’s columns attacking former Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford. Liberals and their far-left socialist cousins constantly demonstrate that they excel at what I’d call the politics of inimical debate based purely on ideology, never facts. And like the “I never had sex with that woman” Clintonism, their standards are only as pure as they chose to define them!
- COALITION NONSENSENever have we heard more gobbledygook spewed out by the “Canadian Media Party” on the possibility of a coalition government. Of course wannabe PM , Thomas Mulcair, is the prime mover of this bafflegab as when the writ was dropped he took his selfie and his mirror image, smarmy smile wore the crown. He feeds the media frenzy on this notion with his vicious, personalized “anybody but Harper” mantra, which is always strictly personal and never based on policy analysis. To his credit young Trudeau agrees with Prime Minister Steven Harper‘s assertion that such a move would be contrary to Canadian parliamentary tradition since any minority voted in has the right to form the government and do their best to make Parliament work.
The argument that has been put on the table by the socialists and various NGO’s asserts that since 60% or so of the voting public typically doesn’t vote for the Party forming government in Canada it should be legal for the immediate formation of a “coalition” of the other Parties with a higher aggregated percentage of the “popular vote” thus ousting the Party that actually won the election; this is pure stupidity. They give no weight at all to the high percentage of eligible voters that didn’t bother to vote and what they might or might not want; to the socialists, these folks don’t matter, they are simply non-entities and only the socialists know what’s good for them.
Socialists also argue that the “first past the post” system of British parliamentary tradition that Canada follows is not fair. Thus according to their reasoning even if the winning Party takes a majority of the seats but has a popular vote less than the combination of the other Parties “popular vote” percentage total the winner shouldn’t have the right to govern. Huh? This sour grapes left wing attitude reeks of the well -known, supreme rights socialist dogma that any means justifies their ends and not surprisingly, holding power tops their list of justifications.
We’ve heard time and again that PM Harper’s proroguing of Parliament was illegal and a contempt of Parliament when the three stooges (Dion, Layton and Duceppe) attempted their coup to form a coalition a few years ago. In actuality, and this fact is never reported on by the Media Party or acknowledged by the Left Wing, Mr. Harper went to Governor General, Michelle Jean, with the proposition that since a major player in the coup was a separatist Party (recall that Duceppe held a plurality of Quebec seats at the time) espousing the break-up of Canada, it would be contrary to the will of Canadians to allow such a move; she agreed and history can judge her on that great democratic decision to enable the dissolution of Parliament as requested by our most conscientious Prime Minister.
By comparison, the USA scenario is worth noting in this discussion because if the map of the USA is examined in the aftermath of Obama’s last election win it is very notable that a large majority of States went to the GOP; but despite this, due to the electoral system traditionally used to decide the winner, Obama and his Democratic Party prevailed. Given that the USA is often heralded as the bastion of democracy there may be a lesson in this.
In my view a “coalition” would only be democratic if the amalgamation was an “all-party” entity. If the Party winning the most seats is ousted completely by some clandestine agreement of the other Parties to form a “coalition” as we saw in Ontario in the 80’s with the Peterson/Rae deal then what we have is a third world style coup not a true “coalition” as we see in countries like Israel. Further, to be truly democratic, an all-party coalition should have a shared executive and the Prime MInister should be the leader heading the Party winning most seats. To make this model a reality a constitutional amendment should be enacted with clear ground rules but I doubt we’ll ever see this happen in Canada.
- RUNNING DEFICITSFor the first time in history we have a Party planning to run not one but three consecutive deficits to the tune of many billions per year. The Liberal Party has put this plan on the table to invest in infrastructure; and this at a time when Canada is having a hard time coping with the collapse of the energy sector that makes up about 20% of our economy. Any such plan will of course make it virtually impossible to increase funding for critical programs such as health and education but this is not even considered by Mr. Trudeau’s shallow economic business plan. In a last ditch attempt to impress voters the Trudeau team elicited the help of former Mississauga Mayor, Hazel McCallion to do an ad supporting Trudeau’s plan which in effect wins the “irony of the year award” since the now retired Mayor left a legacy of balanced budgets and frugal fiscal management, the antithesis of Trudeau’s plan .
Mr. Harper on the other hand will stay the course with balanced budgets whilst keeping taxes low and stabilizing family protection benefits such as universal child care payments. Mr. Mulcair says he’ll balance the budget as well but when you consider his totally unaffordable promise of government -paid-for day care it is readily apparent that he hasn’t costed his promises.
- REBIRTH OF THE FIREARMS FILEThe liberals like to talk about the politics of division and they should know the definition. Never in the history of Canada has a more divisive policy been forced on the country than Bill C68, The Firearms Act of 1995 brought in by the Chretien liberals. This heinous legislation pitted rural Canada against urban Canada and caused over 17 years of antagonism across the country until the Harper team was able to abolish the long gun registry (LGR) and make some other common sense changes. Now, with an election in play, both the liberals and NDP want to reinvent the wheel and continue this cynical divisiveness.
Mulcair of course wins the chameleon of the year award given his flip-flop from supporting the LGR and now saying he wouldn’t bring it back. But at the same time his policy is to give Provinces and municipalities the authority to ban handguns even though he knows full well that no such authority can be so-delegated as it’s federal authority under the Criminal Code. Mulcair’s duplicity on this file is but one example of his untrustworthiness and his disregard for law-abiding firearm owners’ heritage rights that have come down through the generations and were fought for in two World Wars.
Trudeau’s policy platform is to handcuff target shooters with needless paperwork by throwing out the Harper government’s recent amendments and bolster the bureaucracy to over-see records at dealerships that would in effect reinstitute a back door registry. As well, Trudeau plans to support the UN’s civil disarmament agenda disguised as the Arms Trade Treaty .He is in effect carrying on the philosophy espoused by Liberal mouthpiece commentators such as Warren Kinsella and the Toronto Star in their tirades against law-abiding gun owners’ rights.
And guess who’s running as a star liberal candidate? None other than former Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair is on the ticket. Remember him as the guy that strongly supported the LGR and wanted to ban handguns in Canada whilst riding on Paul Martin’s coattails and singing former Mayor Miller’s liberal rhapsody on gun control. When you consider former Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino’s conclusion stating categorically that the LGR had not helped the Toronto PD solve one crime it’s rather a sad testament to a lack of common sense that this proliferation of anti-democratic liberalism is once again upon us.
The recent Supreme Court decision to not allow Quebec to obtain the LGR database essentially put an end to this file given that the data is private, non-transferable under the law and the federal government was perfectly justified in destroying the data. But even so , in a recent twist, we now see the Privacy Commissioner trying to pry this data loose for what purpose God only knows but the liberals and NDP applaud her efforts. How ironical is that!
Ron P. Alton