Enjoy summer break and the new political season

The last 18 months in Canadian Politics have been a political junkie’s paradise. There hasn’t been this many opportunities to savor the delights of politics for years. But there is a troubling suspicion that just as we move to the end game in a number of extended contexts, we may have had enough. While a summer free of the sturm and drang of political choice in Canada makes good sense, hopefully we’re just resting for the season to come.

On the “why to hang in there next year” side of the ledger is the fact that Québec, Canada, and Nova Scotia will likely see election campaigns within 12 months. These may all be seminal.

In Quebec we might see the Liberal Party of Quebec, with Captain Canada at its helm, drummed out of office just after they have spent the check sent to them by Reform leadership in Ottawa.

The PQ will be headed by a woman, whose smarts and experience will make Super Mario of the ADQ look like an overly ambitious boy scout. At stake for the rest of us will likely be the future of the Parti Québecois and with it, the separatist threat, at least for a generation.

For those with a taste for irony, the money Mr. Harper spent to fix the fiscal imbalance in Québec may well re-elect a sovereigntist government, this outcome made possible by the advice of Mr. Mulroney, who was responsible for the Tories splitting into the PCs and Reform, this as a result of his failed Meech Lake initiative to significant enhance provincial powers.

Missed best opportunity

In Ottawa, the Conservatives have this past spring missed the best opportunity in 20 years to form a majority government, and by next winter they will be facing a much more image polished Opposition Leader.

Their attack ads will increasingly look amateurish, bullish, desperate and tiresome, and they may well be seeking re-election in a significantly cooled economy, with the Ontario industrial heartland hurting. Having spent a great deal on the re-militarization of the country, they will have revealed one of the major “hidden agenda’s” for re-doing Canada in their own image.

And while we continue to have ambivalent thoughts about our military future, Don Cheery, in my view, will have done enough damage in turning our patriotism into a jingoistic side show, to leave most of us having had quite enough of that, thank you very much!

Our dollar’s proximity to the American greenback will have done our regional economies some discernable harm and it will re-enforce many Canadians sense that we are moving dramatically into Bush’s America, with Stephen Harper leading the way, and with less than little to show for it.

Gilles Duceppe, after handling his mistake in attempting to jump into Quebec Provincial leadership over the back of

Pauline Marios with believable remorse, will be hungry to work just that bit harder to preserve the Bloc’s life in Ottawa.

Has rallying call

Duceppe will have the Conservative’s military policy to use as a rallying call, he may be able convincingly to argue that it was the Bloc, not Charest’s Liberals, who were responsible for the booty received from Ottawa, and will argue that a strong Bloc in Ottawa is still a better bet for les Québécois than 20 Conservatives in a Tory Majority

In Nova Scotia, the Conservative’s lack of any real plan for the province will become increasingly apparent and they have increasingly be seen as Peter MacKay’s boys, a role for which most observers will have had enough, even if they like Peter.

The Liberals will finally have found the courage to stand and be counted, and the NDP will have its best chance in 20 years to form the first CCF/NDP government in Atlantic Canada.

Meanwhile in Alberta, the province where the yearly increase in a condo’s value is greater than what most Nova Scotian families make and where a box store is larger than most of our towns, there are murmurings of disquiet, both with Provincial Government and with Stephen Harper’s

Ottawa-ification.

The latest boom, while not busting, is beginning to moderate. And if the federal Liberals find their way into office and have their way in securing a green plan with teeth, we may yet see a lot of our fellow and sister Maritimers booking passage home.

So sure, kick back, enjoy the off-season. Next year could be the sort of fun for which, in preparation, one should rest.