CKNW Editorial
for September 7, 2000

On my recent vacation I began to ponder why it is that I despise the federal Liberal Party so much. After all, it was the party of my choice as a youth and, despite all its financial wanderings since, would be my party today all things being equal. In light of the fact that the Canadian Alliance scares hell out of me and its predecessor, The Reform Party, did likewise – coupled with the fact that the NDP never, even in my university days held any appeal – why wouldn’t I support the Liberals. (Lest anyone thinks I’ve forgotten the Conservatives as an alternative I did so lest anyone mistake this editorial for comedy.)

There was, of course, a defining moment – the October 1970 Quebec Crisis manufactured by Pierre Trudeau into a national crisis permitting him to put the entire country under martial law. Because we have such a love for authority in this country the Liberals have never, to this day, been required to give us the explanation we deserve.

But why have I never returned to the fold? Well, somewhere on Orkney it came to me. It’s because they think they own the joint! Those bluddy Liberals are never grateful for the opportunity to govern – they accept is as their natural right not to govern but to rule. As much as anything it’s their attitude … their smugness … their we-know-best approach to Canadians that has manifested itself in a very real way. For it is under the Liberals and the Liberals alone that Parliament has been reduced to one that would make an Eastern European Parliament of Iron Curtain days look like a hotbed of democracy.

It was Pierre Truedeau who said that "50 yards off Parliament Hill MPs are nobodies." The only thing curious about that remark is the geographical limitation. It was under Trudeau that the emascualtion of the MP began through the huge expansion of the Prime Minister’s office and the arrival on the scene of grey faced men in suits of grey hired as outsiders to do the advising of government which properly belonged to parliament. It was under Chretien that this notion of government from the Prime Minister’s Office expanded to the point that there was untterly no power left to the MP. The slightest peep out of a government MP and he was out – out of caucus and, unless he was  particularly tough – and fortunate – like John Nunziata, out of politics permanently.

We have reached the point, under the Liberals, where not only are MPs powerless, so are large regions of the country that don’t vote right. In fact, thanks to the Liberal Party of Canada we now have a Parliament of nobodies who are utterly unable to act for their constituents and the regions they represent. It is a House of Nobodies whose only function is to rubber stamp what Jean Chretien and his inner, unelected circle want done. In fact, the very last refuge of MP independence, the Parliamentary Committee, has not been utterly subverted to the wishes of the prime Minister.

But isn’t this better than, say, the Alliance which often looks like some Christian Fundamentalist picnic bent on excluding the infidel and bringing their own moral code to bear upon us all?

I think not. I personally feel confidcent that Stockwell Day will be able to contain his right-wing Christians and will, in fact, do so. But more importantly, I look at his pledges to reform and say that the risk of error by the Alliance is not of sufficient importance to deny them the opportunity to reform our institutions and restore to Parliament and its members the rights and dignities they once possessed and must again possess if we are to survive. Besides. Even if it only lasted for a short while it would be nice to get rid of the bastards who think and act like they own the joint.