Thursday

Still No Shakeup

Haven't seen anything that leads to a shakeup of the top names in the political parties, but the polls are suggesting that the PM's decision to prorogue the parliament to escape criticism hasn't worked out very well for them.

There sure is a lot of ammunition for proving that the Government's pre-power words about transparency, smaller government and accountability have all been tossed aside in favour of reaching for absolute power without oversight or criticism from those pesky voters.

Big protests last weekend were positive to see. I may well have participated myself had I heard about their pending occurrence. As it was, it still sounds like the turnout was good. Perhaps the outrage is beginning to get some foothold.

Sadly I saw an article on how favourable people across the country feel about people of minority groups, such as Jews, non-whites, French-Quebecers and so on. The charts all showed the least tolerant people as being Albertans! Why is that? The fact that this current government has it's power-base and roots in Alberta makes me even more dismayed. Were they to get a majority, I shudder to think about what sorts of things they would do to equality, multiculturalism, immigration and arts policy to please their rural Albertan base.

Well, at least the winds are blowing in an encouraging direction just now. Would still love to see some new blood at the tops of some of these parties, but I think we'll still have a bit of waiting.

Tuesday

Don't Look At Me

I've given up trying to predict an election anytime soon. The leader of the opposition is a obfuscating mute, the leader of the government has decided to pretty much cancel parliament rather than face criticism and oversight, and the other parties are too small to matter.

There's no hope of electoral reform in the coming 5 years that I can imagine. The media doesn't seem to be able to put in enough effort to make anything stick to the antidemocratic, non-communicative government that gets people vow to boot them out.

It's a dark period for Canada for sure. We're back where we were two years ago - needing a shakedown in the parties to get new people involved at the top.

I can't see an easy way out of this one. We can only hope a leader of some kind emerges from the back benches.