Sunday, September 7, 2008

Election called

Today's the 7th of September, and a federal election has been called in Canada. Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, claims that Parliament has been unproductive -- though his party has a document on how to obstruct Parliament. (Don Martin of CanWest reported in May.) And that is what they have been doing.

The press has been agog with the news that the Liberals have leased a Boeing 737-200 from Air Inuit, which consumes more fuel than the Conservatives' Airbus 319 -- as if the Liberals had hired this plane because it was deemed more luxurious or prestigious, like a Hummer. Not a word about issues so far. Perhaps this is what will pass for an issue.

(UPDATE: Liberals will pay carbon offsets.)

On the first day of the campaign, Mr. Harper seemed to take a card from Sarah Palin's hand:

"Mr. Dion, I understand, is a father as well. I don't know Stephane Dion all that well but I presume that he's been married a long time, has children. I presume he's a family man also.

Being a family man ... a father of school age children is a big part of my life," Mr. Harper told reporters. People say it must be tough to balance your family life with being prime minister. In fact if I didn't have this family life I don't think I could stay balanced as prime minister."

This from a man who, on his first day as Prime Minister, walked his little son to primary school in front of cameras, and took his farewell by shaking the little one's hand.

The quote is from the Globe and Mail. Mr Harper really should really try to learn the difference between 'presume' and 'assume'. Already, he does far too much of the former.

Nothing about field-dressing a moose: I "presume" this is Laureen's job.



As of today, the pundits deem a Conservative win inevitable. And the polls indeed look that way -- they show the Blues at 39%. Let's see.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm so not impressed with any of our choices in this election. That said, I wasn't last time either. My constituency was won by Stephen Fletcher. THAT was very dissapointing.

When I was an undergrad he was the president of the student union at the U of M. He was one of those presidents who did nothing for the students and he seems to be doing just about the same job in Parliament.

So, interesting question: When was the last time that we really had interesting candidates at the heads of one or more of the Canadian parties?