Bud Talkinghorn: Get your loot bags here -&- Shiver me timbers

Get your loot bags here

So much pork has been ladled out so quickly that the Liberals have had to drop some of it by parachute. A reporter at the Globe and Mail admitted that the announcements of sugar dispensing overwhelmed her after the first seven notices. Would the last person in Canada to not receive some dollop of bribery (if only obliquely) please raise a hand? The Grinch, Martin, who prided himself on being fiscally responsible, has suddenly been casting huge amounts of cash around like a Donald Trump. Martin's basic message has been "get your loot now, before those mean old Conservatives waste it on their plutocrat friends." He also manages to skewer the NDP. How can the original empty-the-treasury boys complain about this massive give-away? As a given, extra (hidden) dollops will slip-slide into Quebec, which Charest can use later to defeat his gay cokehead opponent.

However, for once, the public (through opinion polls) have indicated that this bribe-the-people-with-their-own-money has grown stale. Where did those tens of billions come from? Certainly Goodale did not mention this largesse in his budget a mere year ago. Then, even those few billions he had saved were supposedly earmarked for some future catastrophe or paying down the debt. Nevertheless, in the last minute rush to the vault, even N.B.'s Bernie Lord caved and agreed to accept the Child Development grants. He had gained some credibility by demanding that the daycare money be spread around to stay-at-home mothers also. However, the feds demanded that all the money must go to "government-approved" facilities. Now you will get to see how China and Communist Russia got to control the educational agenda for impressionable minds. Even in a country as acquiescent as ours to government control, the idea that the government will now decide what is suitable for your kids to learn chills me. And believe me, when the government pays, the government has built-in ideologies that will be implemented. The voices who suggest that this amounts to social engineering will be ignored. Why, they might even have tried to inculcate Christian values in them. Just think of the one-tier health regulations and extrapolate that to education. That wasn't too hard was it?

Let us take a moment here to ask from whence this cornucopia has come. First up, is the EI fund. The government has kept on collecting from it; they just forget to pay out. Slowly, they began to restrict the eligiblity for payment. Of course, to buy off the Acadian fish workers for their votes they lowered the requirements for them, but not for you. Then there was the Bono embarassment. By fluke, Bono is back in Canada performing and he hasn't forgotten Martin's fine words about foreign aid. He shouts the betrayal out from the stage, thus affecting a young Liberal bloc of voters. Ralph Goodale assured the press immediately after that, "Yes, there were hundreds of millions set aside for Africa, but, but, there was this bureaucratic snafu, you see. It might have gotten to see the light of day, if were not for those nasty opposition parties."

Then there is the realization, coming out of the Gomery Inquiry, that the government often sees fit to hide half a billion or so for national security--such as an insurrection by the Separatists, the aborigines, or the Conservatives. Maybe this continguency fund will have to be be employed. Oka redux or firewalls in Alberta, anything is possible. $9 billion should take care of another Oka, Alberta is a write-off, except for the heavy-lifting to get Landslide Annie re-elected. As for the Separatists, forget the ad guys, flat-out grants for a canoe museum--or one for laughs--in every Quebec hamlet might do the trick. Look, the pipelines that the Liberals use to sluice money to their favourite causes are endless.

You can't even get credible information about the hundreds of loony-left causes they fund through Heritage, the Court Challenges Program, and Multiculturalism grants. And, finally, let us consider the sub-departments, about which we don't even know the functions. The taps there are also turned on full bore. It is our duty as the electoorate to turn some of those taps off, and turn out the Liberals as well. Otherwise, just accept that we have the same ethical standards as a Nigeria.

© Bud Talkinghorn

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Shiver me timbers--a winter election

The Liberals have been hyping the idea of people having to trudge through snowdrifts to vote. Total nonsense of course. Most people will slip out of a warm car, vote, and get back in before the heat even has time to dissipate. If in the 2003 election, 80% of PEI residents can get out to vote during Juan, a raging hurricane, than we can get out of our cars to decide whether the corrupt and arrogant should be turned out of office.

© Bud Talkinghorn

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