It is Done

It is done. The Socialist/Liberal government of Paul Dithers has escaped defeat today on its two budget bills by the slimmest of all possible margins. The speaker of the House of Commons (quite properly) cast two votes in favour of the Socialist/Liberal government after the members of the Commons tied on the two budget bills.

That the budget bills of the Liberal and the NDP parties required the extra-ordinary votes to be cast by the Speaker was in the end due to two factors:

1) The obscene $20 billion dollar post-Liberal budget "bribe" paid by the governing Liberals to the New Democrats to buy their votes; and

2) The offer of high political office to the Not-So-Honourable Belinda Stronach PC, to secure her betrayal of her Conservative parliamentary colleagues, her constituents, and her partner who was publicly dumped in the most thoroughly callous manner imaginable.

The manner by which the Grits managed to cling to political power - the offer of gifts of public money to the first and a patronage appointment to the second - is entirely consistent with the manner by which they manage to win elections in the first place. Why change a winning formula.

I admit they have modified their modus vivendi. This time they chose legal, if unethical, means to obtain their ends. Progress is measured in inch pebbles with our natural governing party, so I do applaud their using legal means this time round. Old fashioned political simony is much preferred (if testimony before the Gomery Commission is to be believed)over raw thuggery, fraud, kickbacks, fat brown envelopes stuffed with $100 bills, and elections to the House of Commons won by flouting laws governing elections to the Parliament of Canada.

The Oligarchs of the modern Liberal Family Compact have once again relied on the pleasantly passive nature of the Canadian people when it comes to Liberal party skulduggery and once again the Canadian people have not disappointed them. We the people are consistent in this matter. As the sordid spectacle unfolded day-by-day and slimed it way to its unholy apotheosis in the Commons this afternoon, the Grits actually rose in the polls. This benediction is at the heart of what that great Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien calls, "Da Canadian values."

We claim to be a people whose government is rooted not on those gauche principles of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" held dear by our much-mocked hegemons to the south, but on the more genteel and subtly sophisticated Westminister model of "peace, order and good government." The Yanks may pride themselves on having the world's largest military cojones, but we Canucks take greater pride in our leaders' golf balls. We really do think that our balls are better than their balls and that our form of government is less corrupt than their form of government.

We fool only ourselves on that score and we are entirely to blame for what has been wrought in our name. In truth, we resemble a battered housewife who desperately points out that her husband is really very kind to dogs as she covers her bruises with makeup.

We enable the Liberal Oligarchs, support them, confirm them and bless them in their way of governing. Being a polite people, of course, we want them to tone down their worst criminal excesses, but in the end we give them permission to continue to do what they do so well. So if you feel oddly queezy about what just transpired don't go blaming the Liberal Family Compact for your upset tummy. They are just living, "Da Canadian values."

And continue to govern us with those values they will. Enjoy.