Canada Reverts Back To 1988

By Alan Clark

    December 7th, 1941 was the "day that shall live in infamy forever" according to U.S. President Roosevelt. Boy was he right, as Dec. 7th, 2003 illustrates. For this is the day that Stephen Harper handed the control of "our party" back to the big political machine in Ontario.

    On the CBC and CTV news there are incensed Conservative Party members who are mad about the Alliance "take-over". In this morning's paper, the pundits are calling the merger "Paul Martin's worst nightmare". Lorne Gunter of the Edmonton Journal even goes so far as to say "thanks to Harper and McKay, national politics got a whole lot better on the right". Lorne has come a long way since his days as one of the fledgling Reform Party's biggest boosters at Alberta Report. Now he seems to be saying that none of that Reform/Alliance nonsense was necessary at all. We only needed to get rid of Kim Campbell and Joe Clark.

    Lest I risk repeating myself, the original intent of the Reform Party was to get the West into the Canadian political system. Preston and Stephen pledged to work toward the institution of our western desires, namely Citizen's Initiative, Referenda, Recall of elected officials, the Triple E Senate, and some fairness in legislative policy, in other words an end to predatory policies such as the C-72 fiasco of Brian Mulroney and the NEP of Pierre Trudeau.

    What has been delivered however, is precisely nothing. The Canadian political system has proven itself to be completely and absolutely un-reform-able. The best that can be achieved is a constant shuffling of the deck chairs. The view however, remains the same. Only someone as cynical as me could believe that this is what Preston had planned all along. Wipe out the separatist sentiment. Calm the western waters and deliver us right back into the hands of the Canadian political establishment.

   Somewhere, Brian Mulroney and Preston Manning are patting each other on the back and saying "welcome back".