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New minority government begins operations

© David Russell

The dust has settled. The signs have come down (for the most part). Recounts have been judicially certified. A quarter of a billion dollars have been spent and Canada has its first majority government in twenty-five years. [http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?sect... ]

Which means we could be going through it all again before too long.

Apart from the obvious expense involved, there's little doubt any Canadian wants to experience another twenty-eight days of name-calling, ambiguity and empty rhetoric that follows the dropping of the writ. To wit, let us now remove from the political lexicon the following time honoured, hackneyed terms and expressions for at least the next four years or until the government collapses, whichever comes first.

1. "Show us your hidden agenda." Essentially spoken by Paul Martin, Jack Layton and Stephen Harper. Whenever a politician can find specifics on which to concretely, intelligently critique an opponent, he or she throws this ambiguous, empty insult. It rarely makes sense, less often convinces voters to change their minds and lacks the intelligence that an actual well thought out, articulate position might hold. And for goodness sakes, learn this axiom of political discourse: the louder you yell an empty statement, the emptier it sounds.

2. "The West wants in." Speaker: the west. The West is in. If the west wants to convince the rest of Canada - if in fact it needs convincing - that Western Canada wants to play a greater role in national decisions, it needs to stop sniveling and complaining about eastern Canada and start seriously promoting sound policy the whole country can support. Nobody likes a whiner. Remember Preston Manning? Don't see his car in the garage at 24 Sussex.

3. "Vision." "We have a vision." "We need a vision." "We have a new vision." "We need a leader with vision." Apart from the obvious discriminatory implications for blind people who want to run for office, for the most part, our politicians score an 'A' for claiming to have vision and an 'F' for articulating what that vision is.

4. Any mention of vision, leadership or plans for the twenty-first century. Regardless of whether you believe parts of the Conservative Party's platform are a little yesterday, no party or leader is seriously trying to develop a vision, leadership or plans for the twentieth, nineteenth or eighteenth centuries; indeed, I have yet to encounter a candidate with the possible exception of a few members of the Flying Yogic Party of 1993 - that really believes they need to plan for the eventual reversal of time that would send Canada backwards into a previous century. And for goodness' sake stop making reference to the 'new millennium.' In the grand scheme of a thousand years it might not seem like long but it's 2004; for most of us the millennium simply isn't that new anymore and making plans and prophesies for it is so 1998.

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