Like Sand Through the Hourglass, This is Our Parliament

Well, when last we tuned in our band of mighty opposition ‘leaders’ had gathered together at the round-table, determined that an official policy of ‘All for one and one for all!’ (with a secondary slogan of ‘Let’s slather Quebec in gold like a husband towards a wife he’s been sleeping around on!’) would be the way to take the reins from the Conservatives and ensure that Canadians could benefit from their ideas of how the country should be run (and to make sure their healthy egos could benefit from power itself).

Well, the new season of the show started up today…and WOW have they changed it! Of course, since people felt the Stephane Dion character simply wasn’t working…he came off as weak and small, not qualities most people want in a leader…the Liberal Party decided to perform an urgently needed rewrite. And in walks Michael Ignatieff! He’s outspoken, he appears to actually be in possession of a working spine and set of gonads, and he…well, he seems to like ties that resemble candy canes a lot. Seriously, look at this photo spread…the man seems to be wearing some sort of mint around his neck in every friggin’ shot!

Anyway, whenever a new character is brought in to a show the writers typically try and make him as diametrically opposed to the one he’s replacing as possible. After all, they’re trying to get away from the character the audience couldn’t stand in the first place. This means all of his thoughts and actions and opinions are typically going to be different as well…and that seems to spell trouble for the ‘Coalition’. Namely, it doesn’t exist anymore. Dion needed the coalition to try and stay something resembling relevant in the Canadian political scene. Ignatieff needs to AVOID the coalition if he is to create an aura of relevance around himself. He’s coming in with a fresh slate, and the absolute dumbest thing he could do is to immediately tie himself to the positions of the man Canada demanded be replaced. So it’s goodbye coalition, hope you had a good time for the…what…5 weeks?…you got to exist.

Unfortunately, I am filled with a horrifying premonition. I can’t escape these images filling my brain…images of a terrifying little elven character hopping about, screaming of imagined betrayals and cursing the fact he’s been pulled farther away from power than ever before. Just when he was THISCLOSE to it, it was torn from his grip. Yes folks, Jack Layton is going to talk. Sweet merciful fuck is he going to talk! And it’s going to be whiny Jack…the Jack who may as well be stamping his feet and shrieking “No no NO!” while tears run down his reddening cheeks.

Jack Layton pushed all of his chips in to the center of the table on this hand…he had a pair of Jacks (HAHA!) and figured he could bully everyone else off the pot. The problem is, every single player at the table had a better hand than him and every damn one of them knew it all along. The irony if it is, if Jack has played the hand he COULD have had…the hand that did NOT involve a coalition, he probably would have cleaned up at the table. Think about it. The Liberals would have been financially shattered by a lack of campaign funding from government tax coffers. They’re listing badly financially WITH that money coming in. Take it out of the equation and you may as well pull all of the ballast out of their hull, and they’re rolling over and sinking to the bottom. They wouldn’t have a had a dime to cling to. It would have taken them years to rebuild the party’s coffers, years during which their campaign productions and advertising would have resembled Handycam footage shot from the crowd of a 5th grade play. Meanwhile, who’s going to fill the void left by a bankrupt Liberal party? Can’t be the Bloc…sure, they’d pick up a few seats in Quebec, but they have no one outside of that province to even challenge for votes. The Green Party would probably have been driven out of existence by a lack of money for votes received…if the Liberals would have been left whoring themselves out from sheer desperation, the Greens would have been the whore whose pimp got her all fucked up on smack…she’ll suck every dick in the room for a quick fix, and she is NEVER seeing a single solitary cent of that money.

That leaves the NDP. The truth is, aside from the Conservatives the NDP are the only other party whose received donations (thanks especially to those juicy cheques coming in from unions) make them a profitable political entity even BEFORE they get their funds for votes. I don’t think they would have swept every single seat from the Liberals, but they likely would have taken enough that they actually could have realized their dream of being the official opposition. It would have been an absolute windfall for the party as a whole…the problem is that it would NOT have been an absolute windfall for Jack Layton. The only conclusion that can be reached from the fact that the NDP passed on the opportunity for relevance as a whole in favor of a ginned up arrangement that REALLY seems to only benefit Jack himself, as he would basically have become the shadow lurking behind the throne…the guy the Liberals would have HAD to give in to time and again or he pulls this support and their propped up government crumbles in to yet another vote, is that he doesn’t give 2 shits about what aids the NDP. He cares completely about what gets him closer to power. The one thing that has been absolutely exposed by this whole debacle is the fact that Jack Layton is nothing but a powermongering little motherfucker and he doesn’t care who he has to step on to get it.

The Green Party…Hell, I think they’ve all but shot themselves right dead center in the head. When you’ve been campaigning as a different voice, as a party that’s removed from all of the controversy and the desire for power, a party that’s in it for the people rather than themselves…if that’s what you run as, having your leader Elizabeth May making public statements about how she can accept the coalition…oh, and she’d just LOVE a nice juicy little Senate spot if they can’t cook up some kind of a cabinet post for her…takes those ideals and takes a nice big shit all over them. If the Green Party is/was EVER going to make a real impact on the political landscape they had to be more than just an environmental party…they tried to also be the moralistic voice party. And now they’ve absolutely destroyed that. Can they recover? Who knows. And, honestly…if they can’t keep their fingers out of the pie for even the short time they’ve existed in Federal politics, do we even care?

The Bloc. Well, really, this doesn’t change a lot for them. They’ll still raise holy Hell any time they get their feelers hurt and every time they want more money (they’re already bitching that Ontario manufacturers got more money than they did). And they’ll still get basically whatever they ask for while the leaders bend us over and let us all take another shot in the ass. You wanna know why you don’t actually hear them talk about separation anymore? I personally don’t think it has a damn thing to do with the people of Quebec tiring of the issue. Why separate when you’re being handed everything you ever ask for? And so long as we keep feeding them every hour or so they’ll still ‘allow themselves’ to be part of Canada. This will continue until 1 of 2 things happens.

1. We all get so collectively sick of it we call their bluff. Put your money where your mouth is.

2. They grow to be 1350 pounds, suffer a massive heart attack, and are taken to the cemetery on a flatbed truck.

The Conservatives? They get a reprieve. However, if Steven Harper doesn’t understand that we’re also tired of his hypocritical nonsense then he truly is the village idiot. See Steve, you didn’t really actually win ANYTHING here. All you really did was wake more people up to the fact that you’re a sanctimonious dick with an ego the size of a good sized city. You have been given a last chance to prove you can actually play nice with the other children and share OUR toys…yes, see, those are OUR toys, we’re only letting your use them for the time being. And if you can’t, you are going to find yourself being the next leader tossed overboard. And it won’t be in that “Hey, walk the plank” kind of way that Dion got…nope, I suspect that the grumbling voices in your party are more the “Shoot him in the head, tie bricks to his feet and throw him in the lake” kind of people. Grow up or go away, Steve, the choice is yours.

And finally, the Liberals. They get the one thing that every party dreams of…they get a do-over. New leader, new ideas…people are going to give them a chance to show whether they can make themselves sensible and relevant, and whether they can be counted on to stand up against something they don’t agree with. They are hamstrung, however, by the fact that it’s STILL going to take awhile for their party coffers to fill up with enough that they can actually mount a serious campaign in a Federal election.

The governing party would be ripped to shreds if they force another election…the official opposition would be unable to financially back another election…call me crazy, but this might actually be good. If neither of the ‘Big Two’ can afford to face an election, all the children might be forced to actually sit and play together, at least for a little while.