Recall my past comments on the Liberal Party – how they do so well equating supposed Liberal “values” with supposed Canadian “values” – it looks like that approach is going to be the thesis for part two of their campaign. Why abandon a winning formula. (See the excerpt below from Paul Martin’s speech today in Winter-peg, kicking off the second half of his campaign.)

I wrote in our past discussions that it was a shame the NDP does such a poor job packaging their politics in natural/shared national values, or that they lack a nationalist rhetoric in their political pitch. A concept that I think is being validated by Liberal successes. Canadians need valuation (in the sense that they appreciate a discourse that speaks positively, even nebulously, about the possibilty of pan-Canadian values).

Canadians will approve of this rhetoric even if it comes from a increasingly corrupt political group. More importantly, a good many of our fellow citizens will vote to hear more of it. The NDP will never succeed in electoral politics without adopting these tactics. A letter to the editor was published in the Globe yesterday on the subject of that paper nominating Ed Broadbent “Nationbuilder of the Year,” it reads:

What a pleasure to read that the Globe selected Edward Broadbent as the Nation Builder of 2005 on the eve of his departure from federal politics. Mr Broadbent is, as you say, a decent and honourable person. But, it’s a shame the The Globe has never been able to see the connections between these characteristics and the political principles that compelled Mr. Broadbent to struggle for social and economic inclusion. It’s no accident that he was leader of the NDP, and that, indeed, one of your runners-up was Stephen Lewis, another former NDP leader who similarly never received electoral support from Canada’s national newspaper. That you revere their values and dismiss their politics is one of the true mysteries of Canadian political life. [Emphasis mine]

There is no mystery here – the NDP hasn’t packaged their political product correctly.

Here is Paul Martin’s speech:

Good morning, and welcome to the federal election campaign, Act II. I hope you enjoyed the intermission. As Sheila says, almost two weeks without a speech from me – you can’t say you didn’t get something nice for Christmas.

But now it’s a new year, a new phase of the campaign, and I’ve got a new speech. Your respite is over.

With three weeks to go until election day, I think it’s fair to say it is only now that most Canadians will be giving this campaign their full attention. During the next number of days, I’ll be presenting elements of our election platform. But to day, I want to do something a little different. I want to tell you about an email I received. “I’m voting for the first time,” a young woman wrote. “Tell me why I should vote for you.”

I answered her. But since then, I’ve found myself reflecting on that email – because what she’s asking is really the question that Canadians are asking across our country.

They are looking at the parties and the leaders. They are looking to vote for someone, and for something. They are looking to vote for a vision of Canada that is faithful to their values and the values on which this country was forged.

Today, I want to set the stage for the second half of the campaign by talking about those values – by giving my view of what’s at stake in this election and what it means for Canada. Because therein lies the answer to that young woman’s question – it lies in the values and the beliefs of those who seek to be prime minister. [Emphasis mine again]

———

This was written by alevo

Like many Canadians, I’ve tuned out the election for a couple of weeks. I haven’t written much about it here over the holidays and though I’ve done some reading, I haven’t followed the stories too closely.

But this can’t be passed up. The Liberal campaign is in absolute shambles. If Paul Martin stood up and announced his favourite book was Hitler’s Mein Kampf, it would scarcely be worse for his fortunes than what’s happened so far.

The Adscam sponsorship scandal has been haunting the electoral battlefields from the very start. It set the context but didn’t define the campaign. The first real blow to the Liberals came from Scott Reid, the Liberal’s director of communications, when he criticized the Conservative child care plan to give families $100 a month by saying “Don’t give people 25 bucks a week to blow on beer and popcorn”.

Now simply called “beer and popcorn”, that major misstep was seized on by opposition party leaders and their supporters who savaged the Liberals. The Libs followed that up with another stunning self-inflicted blow by Mike Klander, executive director of the federal Liberal party in Ontario, when he compared Jack Layton’s wife Olivia Chow to a chow-chow dog on his blog. He posted a picture of her next to a picture of the dog titled “Separated at Birth” and captioned “Chow and Chow Chow”.

Klander has since resigned and his blog has been taken down, though it has been mirrored here. Another minor controversy erupted when Liberal Industry Minister David Emerson said Layton had a “boiled dog’s head smile”, an insult that sounds odd because it is Chinese (he learned it from his wife, who hails from Hong Kong). As a minor bit of mudslinging, this blew over quickly, though it hardly contributed to an atmosphere of constructive debate.

This is all old news for you political junkies, but a little context helps for those who’ve been tuned out over the holidays. The real bombshell was Wednesday’s announcement by the RCMP that they have launched a criminal investigation into the federal government because of the possibility of insider trading stemming from the Ministry of Finance.

Canadian bloggers have kept the fire burning under this issue ever since it was first reported. (Click that link if you want to read what started it all.) The RCMP investigation announcement comes after weeks of speculation and increasingly damning evidence that something stinks. Bad.

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale has refused to step down over the allegations and Martin has backed him up. Which is an admirable bit of political stupidity – admirable for his loyalty in backing up Goodale, stupid because I think Canadians want to see heads roll.

The odour coming from the federal Liberals is overpowering and the polls are reflecting it. Canadians are starting to hold their noses. Unfortunately for Canadians uninterested in Prime Minister Harper, those Canadians are turning to the Conservatives, not the NDP. Support for the NDP is flat while the Conservatives are now tied with the Libs in some polls.

Harper’s fortunes are also buoyed by the campaign the Conservatives have been running. I’m not going to let my dislike of the Conservatives stand in the way of pointing out that they’ve been running a competent campaign. First, they started by putting social issues like gay marriage out on the table to counter claims of a hidden agenda. Second, they focused on making policy announcements. Third, they have simply managed to avoid screwing up: no beer and popcorn statements, no trashy blogs, no criminal investigations.

Policies are what Canadians want to hear about in elections. This is an area where the Liberals should be strong, but they are getting creamed. The Liberal national child-care program policy is superior, I think, to the Conservative $100 a month idea, but beer and popcorn ruined that advantage for them. On the other hand, the Liberal handgun-ban policy is just plain stupid, and a Liberal Party staff member I spoke with admitted as much.

“It might appeal to some people”, he said, “but it’s just a stupid policy.” He works for a Liberal MP and he’s already looking for a new job, because he thinks his boss is going to lose.

As for the NDP, so far this election has played out like usual: the Liberals and Conservatives battle it out while Layton says things in the background that I just can’t make out, either because the media has his microphone on low or because he’s just not loud enough.

At this rate, a Conservative minority government isn’t just possible, it’s likely. This could, as Ryan pointed out before, “give them a chance to play nicey nicey with voters and give them a shot at a majority” when the next election rolls around.

Or perhaps, when Canadians realize the Conservatives smell as bad as the Liberals – a grimy industrial, chemical stench, more like slag pits than the rank cheesy whiffs coming off the decaying corpse of the Liberal Party – they’ll finally give the NDP a chance.

“Our bright light tragically scattered into darkness.”

Jane Creba, 1990-2005. Murdered on a Toronto street. May you rest in peace.

The Last Person

I met a young woman, perhaps 25, at a party. She’s a nurse who works in a busy emergency room that specializes in heart patients. People who have heart attacks and strokes go to her hospital.

I asked her if she ever spoke to people just before they died. She said yes, that it happened frequently. I asked her for a specific example. She said,

“A few weeks ago a man came in that had just had a heart attack. He told me that his wife had died a few weeks earlier. ‘I’ve been learning how to cook and clean and take care of myself’ he said. ‘I’m starting to get used to life without my wife.’ Then he turned pale and died.”

The last person we ever see in life could be a stranger.

But there are worse things than dying guided by a pretty nurse.

The Fighter

He is in his thirties. Old enough to be ugly from the battles but young enough to still have fight left. He is a native Canadian and he’s drunk, just like everybody else in the bar.

He’s a drunken Indian. At least that’s what the whites call him. The little group at the next table are the only ones in the crowd. He can’t hear it but he knows they say it, and other things, “chug” muttered under their breaths when they see his people. The First Nations.

He’s drunk and angry and he punches his wife. Hard enough to knock her back a few steps, send her stumbling into bar stools. One of the white guys stands up and comes for him, he balls a fist but gets hit in the face, hard, brutally.

Then several more times as he falls. He feels the crunch in his face as the bones crack, hears his wife screaming “stop!” over the shouting. He is powerless. Rage fills his eyes, his life of pain and frustration and hardship brimming up. Then he is unconscious.

The Lovers

Another year has passed. The couple sit on a couch in a warm living room. The tree is still sparkling. The remnants of a hangover still cling to them but this is not stopping them from having a couple more drinks.

The brain cells damaged in the previous few days have not yet regenerated which contributes to a mood of hilarity. Tickling, teasing, pet names and jokes that no one else would understand or tolerate are spread around liberally.

It’s fun.

“I love you”, she says, and he responds in kind. Then she starts to cry.

“I feel as though I’m going to lose you”, she sobs. “I don’t know what I would do if I ever lost you.”

He tells her that they have a lifetime to live together. But he knows he cannot guarantee it. What is a lifetime, anyway? Every one of us will meet our day, and time passes by so quickly.

He says their spirits will live together forever. “I don’t want a spirit”, she says, “I want you!”

The problem with taking time off to rest and recharge is that for me, it has the opposite effect. The less I sleep and the busier I get, the more productive and energetic I am. All the relaxation and sleep I’ve been getting lately has me just wanting more. Why write when I could just rest my head on my desk and have a short – maybe even a long – nap?

Because I usually end up drooling on my desk is one reason. More importantly, I need to kick back into gear, because there’s going to be lots of stuff to talk about in 2006.

This is the end of the year, though, and that’s always a good time for a little reflection. To start, I present a brief photo tour of the last few days.

Pulling out the Visa over and over again can be a painful experience.

But when it comes to making bizarre faces, wemi is in a category all of her own.

When gifting a bonsai, care must be taken to dress appropriately.

“I’M HAVING…THE TIME OF MY LIFE! AND IT’S ALLLLLL BECAUSE OF YOUUUUU!” There’s nothing like the Dirty Dancing soundtrack to get the party going.

Some pictures need no explanation.

They say taking pictures of mirrors is bad luck. Who knows what evil lurks here, what creepy weirdo this may awaken…

Uh oh…I think I see something…

Ruuuuunnnnn! Run, while you still have time!

Christmas isn’t a happy season for everyone, as this man’s dispirited shuffle indicated.

Originally a birthday gift, GW finally made it up on my office wall this season.

alevo is in fighting form as we prepare to face off over turkey dinner.