It's Just Politics

Agar Adamson

Having been in Europe for the past six weeks, I returned home thinking there would have been many changes in the Canadian political scene, but alas there have been very few.

Yes, Jean Charest managed to hang onto power, but for how long? There have been budgets at both the national and provincial levels, but their content was predicted prior to their presentation. The Nova Scotia Liberals continue to not only prop Rodney and his government, they continue to look for a leader who would be prepared to spend time rebuilding what was once Nova Scotia’s dominant political machine.

In Ottawa, the name-calling and the attack ads continue unabated. The Bloc, for obvious reasons after the Quebec results, is supporting the Harper budget.

Harper continues to search for Mackenzie King’s crystal ball to see if he might win a majority if he had an election in the near future. Other sages try to explain to Harper and Company that given the fact that we now have five political parties at the national level, majority governments may be few and far between for the next number of years. Besides there is no reason for a national election, other than the fact that the Conservatives would like one.

Meanwhile, the province drifts on a sea of missed opportunities and a fear of causing a tsunami of discontent if they attempted to tackle issues such as electoral reform, municipal reform, tax reform, education reform, environmental issues, agricultural concerns, productivity and health care reform.

Are we being treated like dogs and have bones tossed to us to keep us content, or are we like mushrooms kept in the dark and covered with bumph?

In the meantime, international organizations continue to warn us of environmental disasters unless we do something to stop global warming. But we continue to argue about programmes and policies. Where is the leadership on the environment? The ‘For Sale’ signs continue to hang on the necks of Canadian industries including hydro, natural gas and oil plus other minerals as we see more and more foreign enterprises snapping up our companies. We wonder who speaks for Canada with Harper’s form of decentralized federalism: Is it the prime minister, the premiers, the Bank of Canada, the chartered banks, or the Vancouver Canucks?

We are unhappily torn on the Afghanistan question. Should we stay or bring the troops home?

The majority of our NATO allies fail to join us in dealing with the ‘dirty’ sectors of the war, though this is nothing new as our troops got the dirty jobs in both World Wars. They survived in the trenches of WWI and we remember their gallantry at Vimy. They survived in Holland in WWII after the dykes were blown and the Dutch continue to be grateful while the Americans got the glory in Paris and Rome.

All war is hell and Afghanistan is no exception, but just as our forbearers supported our troops in both World Wars, we must do the same for our troops in Afghanistan and hope that the Americans will shift their support from Iraq to where it should be in Afghanistan.

We ask, who will bring Pakistan on side? We must admit that if it had not been for American intervention in both World Wars, the duration would have been longer and the outcome uncertain. The same is true today of Afghanistan. If only Bush and his gang could understand this simple fact.

Having witnessed the recent celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome when the original six joined together to form the European community, we can see that politics and politicians do make a difference. Perhaps it is the current state of politics elsewhere that makes us wonder if we in Canada are just sitting on the sidelines, fed up with our current politicians and their policies (or lack of same), and wondering where do we go next.

In the past, certain segments of the foreign media have referred to Canada as a rather dull nation. Surely we’re not trying to prove them correct.