Some Thoughts

I have been way too busy to blog in depth about what has been going on these days so I thought I would just summarize some of them.

The polls: As many have noticed the polls have not been giving any of the three national parties any love. There does seem to be a general malaise amongst the electorate.

Although this is not good news for any party right now it is the Conservatives that should be the most worried about it. It does not take long for this kind of malaise to morph into a desire for change. Once that happens there is not much the government can do to stop it and Mr. Harper's own experience should tell him that once that does take root even an Opposition Leader who has been largely written off can win an election.

The Conservatives know this as demonstrated by my second point.

The Conservative capitulation on the Afghan detainee documents: No media have characterized the deal as such but considering the lengths the government went to prevent their release, the statements, a month ago, by senior Conservative officials about calling an election before they would release them and the fact that the government agreed to each and every major demand by the Opposition would indicate they completely surrendered on this issue.

They are afraid of an election and I only hope the Opposition are aware of that fact and begin to use it to their advantage.

Abortion: This particular Djinni has been let out of the bottle and the Conservatives have been trying to stuff it back in ever since.

It still boggles my mind that the great chess master actually let it out. The Conservatives have been playing with fire for over a year by throwing red meat at their base while risking alienating the broader electorate in the process. They have more or less escaped each one of these instances without damaging themselves too much but their luck cannot hold indefinitely and they might have just run out of it this time.

I still question why the Conservatives feel the need to keep shoring up their base. I have stated in this space before that I believe they see something happening within their base that frightens them and this latest episode just reinforces that belief.

Auditor General wanting to audit Member's expences: To what end?

Sorry folks but I am going to have to disagree with the consensus.

It is very common for senior public servants to build empires and our AG has shown herself as being very adept at doing so. This is just more of her empire building and it should be nipped in the bud. There are much greater issues with how this government spends our tax dollars that should be investigated before looking at how individual Members spend their 200K a year office budgets.

The Stanley Cup playoffs: Go Habs Go!

The elections in Britain: Interesting result but it has no bearing on our politics in Canada. It is a different political culture with different values and different personalities. Our form of government may be based on theirs but that is as far as the similarities go.

As well, any similarities that are pointed out about their situation and the ones here miss the mark. For this election the Brits were actually in the same spot we were in 2006. A government that had been in power for a long time, a great desire for change amongst the electorate, but a distrust of the change presented by the only viable alternative to the government. So, the electorate opted for change but they also opted to keep the new government on a tight leash.

That is the limit of any similarities however because the winner of their election decided to enter into a formal agreement with one of its opponents as opposed to trying to govern alone. Once the British Conservatives made that agreement they and the governance of Britain started down a much different path than the ones we have been on for the last four years.