On the day that the Wildrose Party appears to be on the verge of shaking things up big time in Alberta, Canadians would do well to consider what Janice Kennedy wrote over the weekend in The Ottawa Citizen:
Across the country, it seems, we Canadians are being drawn to the small, the narrow, the self-interested. Rejecting old notions of pan-Canadian equality, we have opted instead for regionalism, courting disintegration. And it no longer seems to bother us.
Some of the seeds were indeed sown in 1976 with the first Parti Québécois election, but others found fertile ground more recently. In 2004, there was Newfoundland premier Danny Williams yanking down the national flag in a fit of provincial political pique.
Three years earlier, there was Harper calling for the insulation of Alberta from the rest of Canada — which he had previously described as “a second-tier socialistic country.”
The people who were behind Stephen Harper are the same people who are behind Danielle Smith. Without the Meech Lake Accord, we have what that document promoted. Pierre Elliot Trudeau rightly foresaw what lay ahead if Canada's new Conservatives were allowed to have their way:
He thought it would be disastrous. Over and over, with crisp intellectual rigour, he dissected the accord’s constitutional failings and its self-destructive implications for Canada — the nation, that is, as opposed to some soulless conglomerate of squabbling satrapies.
And here we are -- one hundred and eighty degrees from the party and the nation which John A. MacDonald founded. The old man would not be happy.
Things are falling apart. The centre cannot hold if we continue down this path.
6 comments:
I am not sure I agree. I do think the Conservative agenda is to weaken the Federal government. We see this with the weakening of the agencies that set and enforce national standards from the environment, to food safety, to healh care and even national communication throught the CBC. I read this morning they are even considering selling off the profitable parts of VIA rail. What will be left will then just wither and die. We need a successful national railroad, passenger as well as freight We need a national airline. Such basic infastructer is necessary in a country as big as ours, subsidized if necessary. These things should be a mandate of a National government to tie the country together. With a weak ineffective National government the regions will certainly come to the fore and promote their regional vision over the National one.
MacDonald understood that a railway was essential to national unity, Philip. That's why it had to go through Kicking Horse Pass, and not south through Minnesota -- even if it would be more expensive to follow that route.
That's why Conservative governments -- like Robert Borden's -- created Canadian National Railways out of the wreckage of the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Northern railways.
That's why Liberal governments established the CBC.
Harper is shifting the traditional Canadian axis from east-west, to north-south, convinced that helping establish a Pax Americana would be good for the world.
The CNR and the BCR are owned by the U.S. It's only a matter of time, before the U.S. gets the CPR too. Everything of value in Canada, is owned by the U.S. and China
People should read: Harper gives a speech in New York, at the Council of Foreign Relations, in Sept 25/2007. Harper made his evil agenda abundantly clear.
Harper has given the tar sands to China. they are bringing their own people to work the tar sands. China is also bringing thousands of their own people, to build the Enbridge pipeline. BC is totally owned by China. All of our raw logs, have been so depleted, 2,800 BC mill people will be laid off. Mills will be forced to shut down. There has been no reforestation done in BC.
China owns BC mines, their own people will get those jobs too. Gordon Campbell thieved and sold all of BC's assets and resources. Everything of value in Canada is foreign owned and gone.
Harper is a Neo-Nazi Reformer, of his Northern Foundation Party from 1989. The skinheads organized, Harper's dirty little party for him.
We all know, Harper is behind the election fraud and the robo-calls. Documents were posted, and they have a good reliable witness, that says so. Well over half of Canadians did not want Harper as P.M....he knew it and he cheated.
Harper is every bit as hateful as, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. Their personalities are identical.
Normally, I wouldn't be too happy or too surprised by a Conservative victory in Alberta.
But the defeat of the Wildrose Party tonight makes me think that even Albertans are beginning to cotton on to Stephen Harper.
The Conservatives split in Alberta between the Pc's and the Wildrose.
This has a federal and national (provincial) divide which remind be of what went on in Quebec with the Federal and National divide there. The difference is that Alberta said no to this rift right off the bat.
I am not sure the Wildrose party has a long future. As with the Separtist in Quebec the demographics are against it. In Alberta the parties divided along urban a rural lines. The future is with the urban population. They have voted to stay within the ethos of the rest of Canada. Many PC's decided the future was with a party that can be conservative and progressive. Since so many of the power brokers of the Federal Conservative party backed the Wildrose do you think cracks may develop in that party between the eastern progressive elements and the western radical conservative elements. So far Harper has enforced pragmatic discipline in order to maintain power. As his problem increase the stain my begin to show.
Canadians need to take note that ideologically he belongs to the Wildrose radical conservatiives.
I do not think strategic voting played much of a part. The last poll had the NDP getting 5 seated and the Liberals getting 0. In the end it was 4 and 3 respectively. This shift could not explain the wide margin of the PC victory.
The results in Alberta should give Stephen Harper pause, Phillip. He has tried to establish alliances with other provincial parties.
He sought an alliance with the ADQ in Quebec and that party disappeared. His partisans supported the Wildrose party and they obviously were not trusted by the majority of Albertans. He is trying to shore up the Liberals in B.C.
None of these ventures seems to find much traction.
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