Now that 80% of everyone in Canada, and 99% of participants on this blog, will have finally awakened to the fact that wishful thinking and a buck fifty won’t even get you a coffee at Starbucks, let alone a coffee AND your preferred leader of the free world, maybe we can turn our attention back to the reasons why, back in 1864, a bunch of white men went to all the trouble of building a separate dominion here on the northern half of the continent rather than simply joining in the Great American Experiment to the south.
Namely, they thought that a constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, and a strong federal government were more likely to secure the rights and liberties that they all valued and better able to promote the interests of minorities.
They wanted to build a better country.
It is both unfortunate and ironic, then, that while everyone around here has spent the best part of the last month obsessing over an election a) that was pretty much a foregone conclusion from the first week, and b) over which nobody in Canada had much influence or control at all, multifarious forces have been at work undermining our own domestic political institutions, with barely a word of protest from those most inclined to think that George W. Bush is Satan McBeelzebub, 666 Devil Road, Helltown.
Curious, since I would have thought that if you don’t like the way your neighbour is keeping his yard, the best thing to do is to make like Voltaire and cultivate your own garden, both for your own enjoyment and as a shining example to your dissolute and wayward neighbour.
So what’s it going to be? Four more years of thinly-disguised anti-American kvetching from lefty Canadians while our own country fades into a shittier version of Belgium? Or should we roll up our sleeves and set about fixing the mess that the Headwaiter has left in the kitchen?
Here’s a good place to start.
This is even better.