“If the Conservatives win on Jan. 23, five years from now this will be a different kind of Canada.”
This has now become the mantra of those who oppose change in Ottawa. It is on the lips of those with access to cameras and microphones.
Yesterday, Stephen Lewis, the former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, was using this phrase in an interview on CTV’s Canada AM. For those too young to remember, Lewis was once the leader of the Ontario NDP. His dad, David Lewis, led the federal NDP, a generation ago, before turning the keys over to Ed Broadbent.
But it isn’t just former NDP pols who are using this language. You hear it from the Liberals, many of whom have privately told their media friendlies—a.k.a. accomplices—that the jig is up for them.
The fat lady hasn’t sung yet. But they hear her practising and the voice is getting louder and louder in the echo chambers of their minds.
Losing honourably isn’t the worst thing in the world. A team that fights hard right until the bitter end and loses can maintain self respect and continue to engender loyalty from its followers. But a team that gives up early deserves to go out of business.
In the past few days, many Liberals and New Democrats have come to the conclusion that Stephen Harper will form a government.
The only question now is, will it be a minority or majority?
To try to ensure a Harper minority, the media friendlies—a.k.a. lapdogs—are being told to put the word out that the “Hidden Agenda” gang could put the boots to social programs in the next five years. They are being told to focus on child care. Create the impression that a Liberal government will make child care as “affordable” as medicare. (Did you know that the average Canadian through tax dollars and out-of-pocket expenses is paying more than $400 a month for health care? We pay for a Cadillac and drive a Pontiac.)
The other focus is guns, guns, guns. The Liberals want it shouted from the rooftops that they will take guns away from the hoods and that the Conservatives are the hoods. Scared yet? You might not be.
But what if you are a woman with a couple of kids and making very little money, with very little post-secondary education and, in your mind, not much opportunity?
You are the duck these duck hunters are after and anyone thinking that many women aren’t going to respond to these messages is fooling themselves.
What is clear from here is that the voices of the left are genuinely afraid that Canada will change radically in the next five years under a Harper government.
And they may be right.
Change is in the wind and we need to ask ourselves questions about whether or not we want those changes.
Do we want to have a national government that maintains its power through the relentless pursuit of three “f” words—fear, falsify and fraud.
Do we want a government that steals from its own population (that would be fraud)?
Would changing that be a bad thing?
Do we want a government that constantly and consistently lies (that would be falsifying information) to its own people, even about something as simple as whether or not a certain political ad was running in Quebec?
Would changing that kind of behaviour be dangerous to the country?
Do we want a government that tries to scare its population into voting for them?
And that would be fear.
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