BT Calgary Blogs

It’ll be no surprise to my regular blog visitors that I’ve frequently been impatient with past examples of  facile rhetoric from Jack Layton – especially his drive-by denunciations of the Alberta oilsands.  And on occasion I’ve been genuinely irrirated about his rigid espousal of old-time NDP posturing which ignores the reality of a global economy, and plods backward in time to the notion that the state will do all for all - with no need for bothersome intrusions such as the markets.  I’ve worried, too, about Layton’s endorsement of Quebec’s right to set forth the terms of a possible referendum question in the future -  and his assertion that a 50% plus one tally in favour of separation would be enough to declare victory. 

Readers will also be aware that in the past few months, I’ve noticed a softening of the old socialist warrior oratory, and that I was impressed with Layton’s performance during the recent federal election campaign. 

There are times, though - and this is one of them – when debate about political philosophy is uninteresting and unnecessary.  As of this morning, I have no inclination to comment further on Mr. Layton’s politics, and would instead join the tens of thousands of people in this country who want him to recover his health, soon.  Layton has been forced to temporarily abandon the House of Commons for a trying  personal journey, the end of which is unfortunately not clear.    

But what is clear, beyond all doubt, is that Jack Layton is a brave and determined man.  I firmly believe that even people who feel the NDP is populated by left-wing ideologues and dreamers would  not argue with the contention that Ottawa specifically, and the country in general, are the better for his being with us.

Carry on Sir.

Canadian Veterans:  Home Sweet Home

The latest on this unseemly matter, which began a month or so ago with word that 29 elderly fellows – 20 of whom are veterans – were to be removed from their homes, is that the bureaucracy has set things right, and the boys will remain where they are. 

The issue, however, remains as it was at the outset:  why on earth were these men shown the door in the first place?  It should never have happened, but did because the bureaucracy at Alberta Health Services (viz: the provincial government) and the managers of Chartwell Seniors Housing REIT (a private corporation) could not agree on a lease renewal at the Colonel Belcher care facility in Calgary.  It was a matter of greater profit sought by the Chartwell people, against the obdurate refusal of AHS to yield and pay.  So, having found themselves at loggerheads, the contending parties shrugged, declared that negotiations would cease, and the old vets would accordingly have to fnd accomodation elsewhere.   

There were subsequent cluckings of sympathy from the Liberals and New Democrats, but nothing that could be described as forceful intervention on behalf of the displaced chaps.  I suspect, however, that somebody in the high reaches of the Alberta government (health minister Gene Zwozdeskey, perhaps, or possibly Premier Stelmach himself) made a call or two to AHS which in essence would have asked “have you lost your minds?  Fix this, get an agreement, and DO NOT proceed with eviction.”

As of a week ago, the problem was in fact fixed and there will be no consigning of Canadian veterans to the streets.  It’s a good ending to a dreadful scene, to be sure, but it’s also a story which should have ended at the very beginning – with a lease signed and sealed, and no emotional strain for 20 stalwart veterans, together with nine other men, whose lives were thrown into disarray. 

They were innocents impaled on the horns of disdain, but at least a measure of sanity prevailed, eventually, in the accounting offices at Chartwell and AHS – and so this dismal mess has been cleaned up.  

(As a footnote, my initial post on this matter was spotted with inaccuracies which I like to think were uncharacteristic – but errors they were.  The resolute Alberta blogger www.daveberta.ca set me straight on the facts, which have now been entered as corrections.  But I do not for a second back away from my accompanying editorial analysis, which is now as it was then:  blinkered bureaucrats, combined with flinty-eyed bean-counters, mixed with politics either self-serving or wholly indifferent, caused no end of grief for men who deserved much better from those who purport to serve them).

The Saskatchewan NDP:  Cut, Splice, Edit

On June 23rd, Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall held a news conference at which he was heavily critical of  provincial crop insurance adjusters who had gone on strike just as hundreds of flooded-out farmers and rural townsfolk were attempting to file claims. 

Wall was not pleased, and because of his stance, nor was the union representing the adjusters:  a good many eipthets were  flung in Wall’s direction, and at one point during his session with reporters, the premier was asked if he was annoyed by the union comments.

“I’m not worried about the impact of their rhetoric on me.  I don’t really care.”

So there we have quote #1, which was delivered around the 14 minute mark of the news conference.  But there was another question posed and another answer provided about three minutes and 15 seconds into the session, or roughly 11 minutes earlier. Wall was asked if he would be inclined to resume negotiations with the union, and he said no he would not. 

“Union leadership that are prepared to use those flood victims as pawns in their negotiations?  We’re not gonna do it.  We’re not gonna do it, and they’re coming back to work.” 

So we now have two quotes.  A premier unbowed in the first instance, and highly irritated in the second.  Enter the Saskatchewan NDP, which in a stunt that can only be described as canard of the lowest possible order, seized on the widely separated Wall statements – and edited them into a single, sharp declaration.  The result was Brad Wall, in his own voice from his own news conference, appearing to have no concern whatsoever for ordinary working families. 

The NDP proceeded thusly.  From quote #1 it extracted the words “I don’t really care,” and from quote #2 ”we’re not gonna do it and they’re coming back to work.”  That done, the New Democrats (or as they now insist, the party ad agency) composed a radio commercial in which the voice-over reader, in tones of deep and anxious concern, accused the Wall government of spending vast sums of money on its cronies, and then asked “but when working families ask for help with the rising cost of living, what is Brad Wall’s response?”

“I don’t really care.  We’re not gonna to do it, and they’re coming back to work.”

There you have it:  the marriage of partial quotes, and you can easily see what the NDP was playing at:  selective, and morally repugnant editing, which reveals the party to be wholly capable of lying – there’s no other word for it – about what Wall thinks and says.

I suspect the utter incoherence of Wall’s “response” probably alerted his government to the grubby antics of the NDP, which is now thrashing around on the defensive and conceding that perhaps this would be something not likely attempted again.  But inexplicably, the New Democrats say they’ll continue airing the advertisement, on the grounds that it’s an “accurate reflection” of Wall’s attitude toward ordinary working folks.

I have yet to see the NDP produce any written or broadcast evidence of this so-called attitude, and would be happy to offer a considerable wager it’s because there isn’t any.

The farewell speech delivered in Calgary last night by the Duke of Cambridge, although comparatively brief, was nonetheless an encompassing review of the nine days he and the Duchess spent in Canada – and it included a sensitive reference to the veterans the couple met and frequently chatted with during this remarkable royal tour.  William acknowleged their bravery, their sacrifice, their service to nation – and in so doing did not omit our contemporary veterans who now return from Afghanistan.   

In that context, what do we make of the decision, recently rendered, to throw 20 elderly Canadian veterans out of their Calgary homes because  an Alberta government agency and a private assisted care firm could not reach agreement on a renewed lease?  What do we make of evicting the infirm, the helpless, the aged, the battle-scarred, in the name of money ?  What do we make of  public servants whose tidy bureaucratic world of ledgers and beans, calculators and plus-minuses, would put 20 vets  on the street as they live out their final years?  And nine other old boys, too, caught in the push for profit.

I have a pretty good idea what Prince William would make of it.  He would find it appalling, and he would doubtless wonder why in the name of everything just and rational Alberta Health Services (the government agency), and Chartwell Seniors Housing REIT (the private business) could somehow manage to evict old soldiers simply because AHS doesn’t pay enough money to adequately stuff the Chartwell till.  

Now I understand that Chartwell is a business, and not a company obliged to lose money on its operations.  I also understand that from time to time, a government – whether provincial or federal – does in fact have an obligation and indeed a duty to underwrite financial deficits with tax dollars for good cause.  I have no doubt, not the slightest, that in this case the money would be provided willingly, if not enthusiastically, by the Canadian public.   After all, the provinces and territories, and the feds, hurl millions of dollars every year at a strawboard plant here, a pottery company there, a research paper examining the sexual tendencies of newts somewhere else.  There are in fact a great many people of dubious objectives, and no accomplishment in this country who live on government grants, who know how to work and milk the system, and who every year tender florid, self-congratulatory, and even mendacious submissions to government(s) in exchange for another annual salary. 

The harsh truth of the matter is that government grants are more often than not issued in the name of political expediency:  the presumption that money awarded today will result in votes tomorrow.  It’s a form of patronage – but if the patrons happen to be a tiny band of 20 veterans whose votes would be neither here nor there, and will by death or infirmity be reduced, probably, to 15 or 10 or fewer ballots by the next election, well why worry, then?  Decent compensation in their case would not likely lead to political reward in turn. 

So in one of the most revolting cases I can recall of government NOT in the service of its people, these 29 old boys, vets and civvies both, are homeless.  Their expectation of a few more years spent in comfort and safety has been obliterated by the inability of well-fed, well-clothed bureaucrats and private sector managers to agree that perhaps these men should not be subject to the rules of red ink as against black, and might actually have earned the right to assistance - which in the realm of a $3 billion dollar provincial deficit would be the proverbial drop in the ocean.

A week or so ago, Calgary Liberal MLA Kent Hehr rose to the defence of Calgary condo owners whose units have allegedly been reduced to crumbling wrecks by way of indifferent construction, offhand regulation, and perhaps outright malfeasance.  I have no argument with Hehr’s intervention on behalf of the condo residents, although I note that since his one day of media time, he’s offered no additional comment on the issue, and so far as I know, has taken it no further. 

But I do wonder why Mr. Hehr, or any Liberal, or Brian Mason, or any New Democrat, has not seized on the plight of our 20 veterans and gone to their aid as Hehr did for the condo owners.  And I wonder in particular why Liberal leader David Swann, who’s driven the Stelmach government into a very tight corner on an assortment of health care problems, apparently hasn’t figured out that the uncertain future of 20 evicted veterans is another and compelling case in point.   (It would be too much to expect the gaggle of political seals in the Calgary Conservative caucus to utter a word, but I make the point in order that the record shows they’ve not).  

The fact is nobody has offered to help, nobody has expressed the slightest concern, nobody has responded to ghastly injustice laid upon 20 men who should be the last of Canadian citizens to be abandoned by their politicians.  But they have been – and I suspect that Prince William, were he fully apprised of the situation, would not be amused.

They were just kids, mostly, in some cases still in their teens or barely out of them.  The odd NCO might have been in his early to mid-20s, but the great majority of 14 thousand Canadian men at Juno were boys, really, with high school not long behind them – and the possibility of instant death just ahead.  There would have been knotted fear in their guts, but they went ashore anyway, straight into the muzzles of German guns. 

Juno was Juno Beach in Normandy, and it was the designated landing area for the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division on D-Day, June 6th, 1944.  The youngsters fought hard and well, but at a cost: 340 of those kids were killed, 574 wounded, and 47 taken prisoner by the Germans.  But Overlord, which was the operational code name for the invasion of Europe by the Canadian troops, together with American and British forces, established the allied toehold in occupied territory.  It would be another eleven months, though, before the allies finally won the war, and forced the unconditional surrender of the Nazis and their jackboots.  The total number of Canadian dead in the European theatre, before the killing finally stopped in May, 1945, was 5002, which was a grim reaping for a nation then so small, and so comparatively young.  After all, it had been by war’s end a mere 78 years since Confederation.

This day – June 6th, 2011 – is the 67th anniversary of D-Day.  It has passed with barely a media word, hardly a phrase, just an occasional paragraph here and there to acknowledge what was surely a pivotal day in Canadian and world history.  “Lest We Forget” seems to have lost meaning for contemporary media editors and commentators, and I think it has unquestionably left the mind and conscience of an entire generation of younger Canadians for good – if in fact it was ever there. 

The Normandy cemeteries, the crosses standing “row and row” seem to be of no consequence to us, any more.  But they are to me – and their apparent irrelevance, now, to nearly everybody in our country is worrisome to me, and sad, and disheartening. 

The D-Day veterans who remain with us are a dwindling corps, well into their 80s and in many cases past 90.   To all of them I say Carry On, Men:  you know what you did, you know the price, you know the memories which have darkened and perhaps fractured your souls for the past 67 years – and you need to know that some of us still care. 

It bothers me, a lot, that most of us seemingly do not.

If you accept the thesis that Stephen Harper does his politics as a chess game, always looking ahead by two or three moves, then there’s some validity to the proposition that immediately after the federal election, he loaded a trio of Tory losers into the senate as the precursor to real and significant reform.  The Prime Minister was plainly unconcerned about what he knew would be a brief flurry of protest against the rapid appointment of his failed candidates, and indeed  the sound and fury has waned already.  So now Harper proceeds to restructuring the Senate, which has been his objective for several years, and which he chose to emphasize by nominating his threesome as one last example of how such appointments should not be undertaken from this point onward. 

I’ll concede the foregoing may be a bit of a stretch – but Harper’s determination to shake up the land of political nod is not, and his government accordingly intends to get cracking with fairly serious change, starting with term limits for current and future senators.  The original plot had been to restrict appointments to eight years, instead of the present and frequently long-lasting rewards for political hacks and hasbeens – but the latest version of Harper’s reform package would extend the allowable time in senate office to ten, or perhaps a dozen years.  Either way, there’ll be no more parking a body, whether slumbering or not, in the upper chamber, and then permitting it to remain amidst the luxurious trappings of senatorial privilege until the current mandatory retirement age of 75.  At $135 thousand a year, it’s a nice job – especially if nomination is bestowed at the age of 35, or 40, or so. 

The new Conservative majority also intends to press for senate elections in individual provinces, in much the same manner as Alberta has voted for a good many years for ”senators in waiting.”  The victors, though, have waited in vain – with two exceptions – for the seal of approval from whomever the Prime Minister of the day happened to be.  In the first of those departures from appointment tradition, Stan Waters was elected in Alberta, and then – shortly before he died –  was officially named to the senate by former prime minister Brian Mulroney.  The second was Bert Brown, also from Alberta, elected twice -  in 1998 and again in 2004, and finally given a key to the chamber in 2007 by….yes indeed, Stephen Harper.

Withal, the Prime Minister will encounter resistance from some, if not a majority of the provinces to his plans for actually having senators elected.  Quebec is at the head of the protesting pack, on the shaky ground that moving to an elected senate would be a dire burden on provincial budgets.   As far as I’m concerned, the notion that democratic reform is somehow an issue of cost effectiveness is an empty argument, especially if senate votes were held within the ambit of a general federal election.  The real issue, of course, is that Quebec and the rest of the complaining provincial governments are worried about losing their own influence in senate choices:   to the extent that they have a hand in senatorial recommendations, the provinces wish to keep the patronage trough fresh and well sluiced.

That aside, it’s not as if Stephen Harper has produced this concept of senate restructuring out of thin air.  He’s had a burr under his saddle about it for a good long while, and with his majority government now firmly in place, it seems a good bet he’ll seize his political tweezers and pluck it out, quickly. 

I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t:  Harper’s been the “senate reformer in waiting,” for nearly a decade, and I’m thinking the wait is now over.

Until very recently Mr. Reynolds was a little-known sports agent based in Burlington, Ontario, with a stable of a dozen or so National Hockey League players.  None of them has elite status, with the possible exception of Mike Fisher, late of the Ottawa Senators and now doing his thing with the Nashville Predators. 

However, because of a tweet the other day about the evils of same-sex marriage, Reynolds is now – fleetingly, one hopes – not so little-known as before.  In fact, he’s achieved a certain notoriety in the wake of his tweet, which he composed after NHL pest Sean Avery appeared in a TV public service announcement, in New York.  It was a 30 second spot  in which Avery declared his support for same-sex marriage, and clearly implied that other professional athletes should do the same. 

Now I’m not exactly a big Sean Avery fan because he’s been prone to stupid behaviour on the ice (waving his stick in front of New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur), and ignorant utterances off it (blabbering away about how NHL defenceman Dion Phaneuf should have better taste than to hang out with women who’d previously been rooming, as it were, with the mighty Avery himself).  But with the release of the New York video, Avery has at least  revealed himself to be a man of some social conscience and awareness – which certainly cannot be said of Todd Reynolds.

“Very sad to read Sean Avery’s misguided support of same gender marriage.  Legal or not, it will always be wrong.”

That tweet is the language of a rigidly evangelistic and intolerant throwback to a social construct long since past.  But Reynolds has nothing on his business partner, who also happens to be his father:  same sex marriage, according to dad, is akin to bestiality, which can only be descibed as an opinion bordering on the grotesque.  It does reveal, however, the genesis of Todd-boy’s attitude:  what father thinks and does, so too the son. 

We can only hope Todd Reynold’s few moments in the twitter sun -  and latterly, in maintstream newspaper headlines – will soon dim and in fact they undoubtedly will.  But there’s a wider issue at hand here, and that’s the existence of a significant psychological problem, I think, among NHL players.  They’re terrified – with the obvious exception, now, of Sean Avery – of acknowledging the mere presence in our society of same sex marriage, or for that matter gays and lesbians, period.  They’re desperately afraid of being shunned, stigmatized, ridiculed within the macho-man enclosure of professional hockey – and so even the 10 percent or thereabouts of NHL players who themselves can be statistically presumed to be gay remain silent, hidden in the closet.

They do so in large measure because of homophobic wingnuts like Todd Reynolds, who has now emerged from player-agent obscurity to stardom, however brief, among the minority of backward  folks who reside in some place other than the real world of 2011.  They’re bigots, all of them, ranting  against the sexual tolerance that  thoughtful, mature  people have easily accepted as the standard of modern society.   And when it suits them, the homophobic types wrap themselves  in the raiment of Christian indignation, as if to bring forth the fires of hell on men like Sean Avery. 

It’s instructive, I think, that pro athletes from all the other major sports – the NBA, NFL, and big-league baseball – have come out in recent years, although in every case it’s been after their locker room careers were over.  But from the NHL, either during or after the playing days?  Not one, because they’re trapped in a dreadful time warp not dissimilar to the cave man with his club (or metaphorically, the hockey stick) in which there’s no yielding  to pain (or voluntarily to concussion), no admission of weakness, and certainly no thought, ever, of admitting to even the slightest  awareness  there are gays and lesbians in our midst – and that in all respects save whom they choose to love, there’s nothing in their lives to distinguish them, make them better or worse, than all of us straights.

It’s possible, maybe, and perhaps even probable that Todd Reynolds has actually done the NHL a favour, because for now at any rate, he’s propelled the issues of accomodation and understanding to the forefront of the sport – by denouncing them in the context of same sex marriage.  (The irony, I think, will not be lost on most people, and perchance it will even register with a few NHL players).  And with the great strides our country in general  has made in recent years toward fully embracing same sex marriage, I have no doubt Mr. Reynolds will tumble rapidly back to the anonymity he richly deserves. 

In the meantime, it will take but one NHL player to come out, declare, and then be greeted with the marvellous reality that apart from useless jerks like Todd Reynolds, nobody will care one whit.  That player – and others who’ll surely follow – will owe a great deal to Sean Avery.

I have this political fishbone lodged in my throat, and I’m pretty close to choking on it. 

Gilles Duceppe, the former leader of the defunct Bloc Quebecois, and for 20 years a treasonous member of the Canadian House of Commons, has proclaimed he will now return to his home province and will not rest “until Quebec becomes a country.”  Mr. Duceppe, who lost his seat in the federal election a week ago, will pursue his separatist dream while collecting a publicly funded pension of $140,760 every year from this point forward.  The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which has been strongly opposed for years to the parliamentary pension scheme, figures if Duceppe lives until he’s 80, his total winnings will be just a shade less than $3 million dollars.  And that’s not all:  three other Blocheads consigned to the dustbins of defeat will also be treated to more than $100,000 a year – all paid for by Canadian taxpayers. 

There’s something fundamentally wrong with a system which delivers $4 dollars of our money to pensions for members of parliament, while they themselves contribute only $1.  One measly dollar for every four from the Canadian public.  It’s an obese perk which finds no parallel in the real world of Canadian working folks, who in large majority have no pension plans at all.  But our politicians line up at the slop pail, snorting and grubbing their way to retirement – whether forced or voluntary – which will ensure  reasonably comfortable lifestyles for the rest of their days.  The only requirement is that our MPs serve six years in the Commons in order to qualify:  thereafter, the gravy train rolls.

Here’s the other thing.  Even if a member doesn’t make the six year cut, gets defeated after one term, there’s money to be had.  It’s called a severance payment, which to me is particularly offensive as applied to one-term wonders who get thrown out of office by their constituents.  Failure, though, has its rewards because the severance cheque this year comes to $78,866.  Not bad for hanging around the Hill  for a couple of years, or three, and then getting turfed.  Not bad at all. 

But the worst of it by far is the delivery of our money to the likes of Duceppe and his Blocheads.  They were all phonies, nuzzling  for years on the federal udder and now – with the exception of four who remain in Ottawa – they’re all headed back to Quebec with a firm grip on the teat.  And the Canadian public, with little or no sign of protest, is providing the milking machine.

The Taxpayers Federation website has a petition going to stop this insane nonsense.  You can help dislodge the bone in my gullet by signing it, without delay and in very large numbers.  It’s an easy click:  www.taxpayer.com

The Dippers:

I take a measure of comfort, a teaspoon’s worth perhaps, in being among dozens of false prophets around the country.  My bold prediction that Jack Layton, after decisvely winning the English language TV debate during the election campaign, would then toddle onward to the typical NDP caucus of 30-odd MPs was matched by equally offside forecasts from every editorial writer and columnist in the land. 

I’ve been wrong before, but seldom so dramatically.  However, we cannot attribute the NDP arrival as official opposition in the Commons to simple electoral mathematics in Quebec.  The party increased its vote total in all parts of Canada, to nearly double its tally of 2008.  Almost without exception, it held on to its seats in Ontario and western Canada, and its final total of 102 wins unquestionably makes the NDP the second most powerful political entity in Canada. 

 The fact remains, though, that the bulk of its support came from Quebec – the so-called playschool rush – which places the NDP in the odd and potentially tricky position of advocacy for that province, while maintaining its historical posture as a federalist party.  Already, two of Layton’s crew have suggested the New Democrats will respect Quebec sovereignty if it comes to that, and in fact one of the youngsters allowed that Quebec will indeed become a separate nation:  it’s merely a question of time. 

Jack Layton doesn’t need that kind of nonsense going into the next session of Parliament, and he certainly doesn’t need his senior deputy, Thomas Mulcair, veering stupidly close to conspiracy theorism about the lack of firm evidence, in his view, to certify the death of Osama Bin Laden.  Layton will have trouble enough rounding his juvenile caucus into an effective, coherent opposition force without such idle shots from the lip - and all the more so since the Dippers will be confronted by a Prime Minister who has incontestably become one of the shrewdest, craftiest political leaders Canada has seen for a very long time.   

For now, though, credit where credit is due.  Jack Layton has ascended a very high political mountain and in so doing redefined Canadian politics.  The fact that in the process, he destroyed Gilles Duceppe and the Blocheads can only be seen as a bonus:  we are well rid of that mob, and primarily because of the New Democrats, the country is the better for it. 

The Grits:

Conventional wisdom has it that the Liberal Party of Canada has been declining at flank speed for the last half dozen years and more – and there’s a great deal of evidence in support of  that analysis.  Deterioration has been plain to see, starting with the endless leadership derby following Jean Chretien and let it be said,  his three majority victories.  The Grits have since been bouncing leaders around like rubber balls:  Paul Martin, Stephane Dion, Michael Ignatieff.  Martin managed to squeeze out a minority government in 2004, but thereafter the Liberals were sliding toward oblivion – and have now reached it. 

But in the context of the election just concluded, let’s not ignore Ignatieff’s signal contribution to decline and fall, beginning with his ill-considered decision (against the advice of several veteran Liberal insiders) to force the non-confidence vote which defeated Stephen Harper’s minority government.  Ignatieff was determined to have at it against the Conservatives, but he woefully misjudged both the mood of the population – and more ominiously, the remarkable maturing of Harper as strategist, tactician, and above all, hard-nosed and even ruthless politician. 

The anti-Tories can fulminate all they want about Harper the control freak, Harper the humourless drone, Harper the secretive political dictator – but the fact is he got his majority and in the process – with assistance from the NDP – reduced the Liberals to dry toast.  The Prime Minister played a decisive role  in demolishing the Grits, to be sure, but the principal reason for the Liberal death throes was Ignatieff’s curious inability to connect with voters, to persuade them he was not in fact a Johnny-Come-Lately to Canadian politics, and most importantly, to convince all of us he was anything more than an oddly vacant egghead.  In spite of his best efforts to be “one of the guys”, Ignatieff was anything but:  detached in a strange sort of way from reality, and therefore detached from the people whose votes he sought. 

And it says something, I think, about the man who within 72 hours of leading the Liberal Party to disaster would cheerfully disclose he’d accepted a sinecure at the University of Toronto.  He would go back to teaching law, and political science, even as the 40 plus Liberals who lost their Commons seats under his leadership were wondering, and no doubt worrying about their future prospects.  Not so for Michael Ignatieff, though:  he’ll do just fine, and presumably will give little thought to his former colleagues who are now – in a manner of speaking – on the streets. 

So Ignatieff will spend his summer busily preparing courses for incoming students at the U of T.  I assume the post-graduate lectures will concentrate exclusively on the art of losing elections, because Michael Ignatieff clearly has no understanding of how they’re won.

There were three striking points, I think, about the English language television debate last night – and one was a blow which landed squarely in Michael Ignatieff’s face and left him with a bloodied political nose. 

You can’t say Ignatieff didn’t walk right into it after rabbiting and hectoring away, ad nauseam, about the Harper government’s disdain for Parliament, its high-handed attitude toward the cherished principles of our Canadian democracy, and of course its dubious standing as the only government of any in the history of electoral politics to have been declared in contempt of  a legislative assembly – in our case, the  House of Commons.  So quoth the Grit, and NDP leader Jack Layton saw the opening and took it. 

In paraphrase, Layton said that was all very interesting, coming as it did from a political leader whose attendance record in that selfsame House of Commons is the worst among the four of them, and further, falls well short of the vast majority of backbench MPs.  Layton added that if Ignatieff was looking to get a job promotion, you’d think he would at least have bothered to show up for work. 

(Based on that shot, combined with several others, I think Layton easily won the debate – within the narrow enclosure of the event itself.  At the very least, he no doubt reinvigorated his tiny but sturdy band of supporters across the country, which is to say the NDP will now most likely return to Parliament with its customary 16 to perhaps 18 percent of the popular vote – and 30 odd seats.  As the old cliche would have it, the New Democrats can win the occasional battle, but never the war).

Ignatieff looked like he’d been whacked with a two by four, and offered no response except to start gibbering and reciting  points already made, criticisms already levelled, and prior accusations hurled while Tory and NDP spin doctors instantly began rubbing their hands with glee.  Ignatieff didn’t go down for the count, but he took a standing eight and from that point forward appeared to be pretty much out of it.  

Now, I observed there were three points at issue for me, so having dispensed with the first, allow me to introduce the second, thusly:   affirmation, as if we didn’t expect it hereabouts, that western Canada is of no interest to these four characters, and furthermore, is wholly irrelevant to the tall foreheads in charge of the broadcast consortium.  In their wisdom, the media planners for the debate decided the questions for the leaders would come from ordinary Canadians, and so it was that canvassing began to find worthy citizens in all corners of the nation.  Except, of course, the prairies.  Of the six voters chosen to pose their questions, not one was from Alberta, or Saskatchewan, or Manitoba.  Not one.  One suspects that would in part, or perhaps in whole explain why no mention was made of western Canadian concerns, in particular with respect to the oilsands, and Ignatieff’s contention they should be subject to  cap and trade emission controls.  And there was nothing about continental energy policy, whose future is somewhat in doubt because of the Obama administration’s hesitancy about it, but which in the long-range view is nothing short of critical to our national economic future.   Not a word about any of it, not a breath about agriculture, which simply confirms we have at best a marginal influence and role in Canadian politics, or possibly even no influence at all. 

(Tara Slone, here at Breakfast Television, had an astute comment about this brushoff against western Canada:  the time slot for the English language debate, 5:00 to 7:00 PM in Alberta and Saskatchewan (6:00 to 8:00 in Manitoba), was as inconvenient as it could possibly be for folks out here, close to six million of us, who were on the commute, at home fixing dinner, tending to the kids, out with the kids, preoccupied with Lord knows what…except politics.  But this, too, was of no concern to the eastern media establishment, and plainly rang no bells in any of the four leader camps  – including that of the emotionless and stolid Stephen Harper.  I’d have thought the PM would at least remember where his riding is located, and perhaps acknowledge the fact, but no:  he’s as indifferent to it, and to us, as the opposing trio within the quartet).

And that takes me to the third bone of contention, which is joined at the hip to the second:  the mere presence of the Blochead, Gilles Duceppe, in a debate purporting to be concerned with all of Canada.   His endless commands that we kneel at the altar of Quebec interests, and no others, inflame me well beyond irritation to deep and sustained anger that my Parliament, my House of Commons has been populated, and will be again, by four to five dozen avowed separatists who in truth are no such thing.  They are simply remoras attached to the hide of Canadian democracy, determined to bleed as much money as possible from the rest of us – and not incidentally gathering in fulsome wallets for themselves in federal salaries, and federal pensions.  It makes me ill, all this talk about how the Blocheads have to be acknowledged because we must understand and we have to agree that their participation in Ottawa affairs  is essential to the maintenance of one Canada, when for 20 years they’ve actually been a second, but totally fake Canada hanging around the Hill.  

Did I say it makes me ill?  Yes, I did.

The auditor general of Canada discloses that the Harper government “misinformed parliament” about $50 million dollars in questionable expenditures for the G8 and G20 summits last year – and nobody cares.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff does his level best to make hay of this, and as he sees them, other ill-considered antics by the Prime Minister and his crowd – and nobody cares.

Jack Layton carries on about the plight of hard-working Canadians and their families, just as NDP leaders in the decades before him embraced the same ancient theme - and nobody cares.

Gilles Duceppe hangs around – and nobody cares.  Elizabeth May?  Nobody cares.

And so we arrive at the mid-point, give or take a day, of this dull trudge to another federal election.  The polls deliver a steady run of data which reveals the Tories gaining a point or two here, losing a point or two there, which means they’re basically inert and probably destined to win another minority government.  Michael Ignatieff and the Grits are becalmed, too, with nothing to show for the campaign so far except they might  just as well have not campaigned at all.  And  Layton will apparently hold on to his sprinkling of seats across the country, perhaps lose a couple, but will return the NDP to parliament as an innocuous afterthought in Canadian politics. 

It could be the leaders` television debates tomorrow evening and again on Wednesday will stir the electorate into mild interest, but don’t count on it.  After all, none of our political leaders – save the scorned Ms. May – had the slightest objection to shifting the timing of the French language debate from Thursday, as originally scheduled, to Wednesday because an NHL playoff game would be on the air at the same time.  Harper, Ignatieff, et al clearly understood that with Les Canadiens versus The Bruins as competition, viewership for the debate would be zero, or very close to it.  That might suggest the real power in Canadian politics is at centre ice, and not at centre stage, but if that’s straining the point a bit, to say we Canadians are bored beyond description is not. 

The whole shambling effort has been like an overdose of Sominex, the over-the-counter sedative which brings on drowsiness followed by slumber.  Small wonder:  the party leaders themselves have been sleepwalking through the exercise from the start, holding rallies and townhalls, issuing policy statements, running TV ads, and in general conducting their campaigns exactly as they were run by previous leaders 40 and 50 years ago.  The only difference is that nowadays they hare around from here to there by aircraft instead of by train – although Ms. May attempted to resurrect the ghostly image of campaigns past by whistle-stopping last week around Atlantic Canada.  

At the root of this public ennui is one incontrovertible truth our politicians, Ignatieff, Layton, the Blochead and no doubt Harper, too, seem not to have grasped:  we’re worn out by the whole lot of them.  They don’t interest us, their posturing wearies us, the process disenchants us.   It would be different if any of the opposition leaders had the slightest concern about competent government, but they don’t, and quite frankly whatever views Harper may have held in the past about governance have been sideswiped by the circus.  It’s all about power, about winning, about burying the other guys (and gal) and while that’s not exactly a startling revelation, the fact remains we’re much more victims of this whole wretched business than we are participants.  Actually, I don’t think there’s much question  that we’re completely turned off by the continuing nonsense of this campaign, and we’ll no doubt put an exclamation point on our indifference by not showing up, period, on election day.  It will be, I suspect, the nadir of voter turnout.

Tommy Douglas used to talk about the Tories and Grits as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.  He didn’t apply a Tweedle-something sobriquet to the NDP, which was understandable, I suppose.  But the other two?   It’s true the two main parties  have their differences, but in terms of how their leaders – Stevie and Iffy - relate to all of us, Tommy was pretty close to the mark.