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COMMENTARY
May 18, 2005
Belinda Stronach
From the lips of the lovely Belinda Stronach, Canada received her Judas kiss yesterday. It allowed a bottomlessly corrupt government to escape an election; to continue in office with an agenda that will tear to pieces what remains of our social fabric; which will radically advance the cause of separatism in Quebec, and spread it irretrievably to Western Canada; which will put the country on the fiscal skids. This should not be understated: our country has been delivered into the hands of the wreckers.I am writing this column now because I do not believe I could persuade my editor to run the space blank. That would most eloquently approximate to what I thought at precisely 11:11 a.m., yesterday, when the news reached me. In a single image, I took in the final betrayal of Canada -- those two smiling faces. On Saturday, I wrote that last week had been the most disgraceful in our Parliamentary history: the first time a government had ever refused to acknowledge that it had lost the confidence of the House of Commons. Nor can I find a precedent, in Canadian political history, for the act which the ditzy Ms Stronach so glibly performed. Over the weekend, Paul Martin suckered (the word is not too strong) Stephen Harper into a Parliamentary “truce”, while Ms Stronach unsheathed the knife for Mr. Harper’s back. She had only waited for the opportunity to be presented; to get the timing just right. Yet the sight of Ms Stronach and Paul Martin smiling for the camera could not come as a complete surprise -- any more to me than it should have come to Ms Stronach’s recent lover, her fellow Conservative frontbencher, Peter MacKay. He has also been stabbed in her trip across the floor. In personal terms, Mr. MacKay learned too late what kind of woman she is. And Mr. Harper, whom the Liberals’ media friends are trying to portray as “dangerously angry”, has learned why he must never again enter into any kind of agreement with a man of Mr. Martin’s moral character. But Mr. Harper, too, has learned it too late. Am I making this personal? Yes, and it ought to be made personal, by everyone who has been betrayed -- every Canadian not directly in the pay of the Liberal Party. We have been taken for a ride, we have been cheated of the constitutional order that was our birthright. And we have been cheated by people who have used the stations with which we entrusted them to advance their own personal interests at the expense of ours. If Mr. Harper did not seem angry, I would have no hope for him. He is in fact angry, because he is a decent man; and because he is looking directly into the sleaze at the heart of our government. There is such a thing as righteous indignation, and now is the time for it to be expressed. I have entertained dark views of Ms Stronach since the moment she entered politics. I argued then, among Conservative friends, that she could be a Liberal Party plant, given her known previous close associations. I abandoned that position, when she ran for the Conservative leadership, thinking, “Surely she is playing her own game.” On balance, I conclude that she is playing her own game, but that is just what makes her a Liberal. For the Liberals, by now, consist entirely of persons playing their own game, ruthlessly, for personal advantage. This goes beyond any passing mood I might indulge: I can no longer see how any decent person could retain membership in that party. The voters of Newmarket-Aurora sent Ms Stronach to Parliament in the clear understanding that she was a Conservative candidate. Those voters were used. In several Third World countries, efforts to democratize have been impeded by the easy corruption with which an unscrupulous party may buy off unscrupulous individuals across the chamber. This renders elections meaningless. In Canada, after more than a century of continuous, stable constitutional rule, we must wrestle with moral smugness. Members would never wish to be caught accepting bribes in ready cash: for that would be not only criminal, but crass. So they accept other forms of payment, in lieu -- often exchangeable for money further down the road. They dress themselves in a little faux idealism, and pretend that they are acting for some greater good, as in Ms Stronach’s vague ramblings yesterday; then accept a Cabinet position, in exchange for betraying their party and constituents. Personal sacrifice is the mark of the good deed; the pay-off should give the game away to every observer. The people who were lining their own pockets -- according to copious testimony before the Gomery Inquiry -- pretended to be doing it for the greater good. “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” as Doctor Johnson said, and we are reaping what true scoundrels have sown. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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