Monday, February 14, 2011

Total Failure

Imagine if a leader was elected on a free market platform, and then after elected nationalized core industries. How would people react? What if a leader was elected promising a passive foreign policy, diplomatic engagement, and then after taking power suddenly starting declaring unilateral war and invading neighbours? How would people react? Okay, now imagine a leader was elected promising to bring openness, accountability and transparency to Ottawa and then upon taking power becomes the most secretive, controlling, resistent to shed light, least accountability regime of recent memory. How would people react, or more rightly, how should they?

Ibbitson piece today highlights the absurdity of withholding basic expenditure, revenue figures, in the name of "cabinet confidence". What the Conservatives have done on the prison, corporate tax files, is a complete affront to the most basic and fundamental tenets of our democratic system. That this obscene example of secrecy isn't a "one off", all the more alarming.

Ibbitson is right to note a vulnerability for the Conservatives moving forward, but I find it concerning that this government can still mention accountability with pride and not be laughed off the stage. In other words, it remains to be seen if voters will hold these complete failures accountability at the voter box, or if we are such a detached lot, nobody even notices. We have a government that personally mocks watchdogs they've campaigned for, has put a "chill" across the public service, has done everything in their power to withhold, frustrate, oppose, every attempt to extract even the most basic of information. What is happening, has happened, gives every indication will happen in the future, simply astounding and yet...

Enjoy your deep sleep Canada, because while you slumber, these bandits are robbing all of us blind.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

And sadly, the Conservative response to this? "He didn't come back for you". "Not a leader". Etc. I'm afraid we are as stupid as they hope we are...

Kirk said...

If you can't put a policy, criticism or analysis on a bumper sticker then no one cares.

Want to #&%* Canadians hard? Just do it in a complex way. The media will ignore it and the public won't understand it.

Give me a slogan about this Conservative secrecy that will fit on a bumper sticker and it might matter. I say might because the media by and large won't do any reporting on this and certainly not anything in depth and even though there is a lot of "depth" for the media to mine.

We'll never see a special report on it on The National though.

Tof KW said...

"We'll never see a special report on it on The National though."

Of course not, because you'll just the usual CBC = Liberal media bullshit, and calls to defund the network. So the CBC takes it easy on the Harper government, just like CTV, Canwest-Global, the Globe, the Star, etc, etc.

At least SUNmedia & the NationalPest are more honest in their total support of the Harper government.

Steve V said...

It's so true, everything reduced to bumper sticker ability. I'm starting to move from the actors to the audience, until voters demand more, then this is what we get.

This "cabinet confidence" issue is absolutely massive, the implications of what that veil means to our democracy. And yet, I could walk the streets all day long and nobody would have the slightest about what I'm on about.

Tof KW said...

Steve, we might as well be living in China right now; as their autocratic government propped up by a compliant media is just a milder version of what we have now. So long as they are 'supposedly' providing economic stability and jobs for the masses, that's all that matters and prevents a Chinese counter-revolution from occurring. Everything else is excused; corruption, censorship, incompetence, whatever. So long as we all have jobs, who cares?!

Far be it for our media to question our own government about such trivial things ...like how much of our tax dollars they will be spending on their wingnut-populist pet projects.

Ibbitson did a good job today, but the remainder of our entire media establishment will just brush this off. Meanwhile I'm expecting another CPC puff-piece from Taber about how 'unnamed' sources from the LPC are calling for doom this spring; re: the latest EKOS poll.

Steve V said...

It is sort of funny that we are glued to the birth of democracy in Egypt and yet we have no time for our own it seems. Time for someone to challenge the electorate.

Tof KW said...

Just to correct myself, I meant our situation here is a mild version of China ...or Egypt up until a few days ago.

Steve V said...

Sorry my bad, I went to Egypt on my own, understood your China reference, sadly true.

Tof KW said...

Not totally sad, at least the Egyptians did something about it.

We, however, are too complacent to see there are 56 billion reasons (and counting) to be fearful of Harper's fiscal mismanagement of our country. But our stupid MSM just parrots "...but the Liberals would be worse" as if that were a proper answer.

Marc Bernard is correct, we are as stupid as they hope we are.

Shiner said...

At this point I'm almost hoping for a Harper majority just so Canadians get a full helping of what they deserve.

I won't blame the media outside of blatant pimping a la Taber, because there have been issues where the media has done its job and people just tune out.

A Eliz. said...

Where did the Liberal Party go to.....M.I. was missing in action today. Is Donolo not thinking of running ads to counter Harper..there is plenty to tell about him in the last 20 years . We do not need to be so weak kneed.