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COMMENTARY
May 21, 2005
Lights out
At the end of a second week of disgrace in Parliament, I can find no upside. Paul Martin contrived to remain in power by purchasing Belinda Stronach (at the bargain price of one second-tier Cabinet seat). The Conservatives released a tape, recording the prime minister’s chief of staff negotiating the purchase of two other members; with no major outcry. The government, which had lost the confidence of the House last week, established the principle that “possession is ten-tenths of the law”, by clinging to power until it was able to buy what had previously eluded it, with the resources of the state.The Canadian constitution was overthrown. Of all other pundits, in Canada’s overwhelmingly Liberal-friendly media, I think Andrew Coyne alone fully grasped this fact. He and several others complained that the Conservatives had put up a dismal defence, yielding the spectacle of Stephen Harper running around behind Paul Martin, promising to match the extravagant payoffs he was offering to each vested interest. I think Mr. Harper showed moments of real dignity, too; but the criticism still holds. Such small-c conservative journalists as we have, except Mr Coyne, and John Robson, have indulged the happy-faced notion that the defection of Ms Stronach was “good riddance”. I agree with them, and believe Ms Stronach and the Liberal Party deserve each other. As Elmer MacKay, the father of Ms Stronach’s discarded “boyfriend”, said: “I would rather be betrayed than be a betrayer.” But I do not agree that any good has come of this woman’s extraordinary act of treachery. The Conservatives are no closer now, to understanding that they cannot win by offering a more naïve, less crooked version of the Liberals’ feckless policies. For the corruption runs much deeper than what has been alleged before the Gomery Inquiry; even deeper than what we are likely to find, if the finances of Canada’s innumerable, large crown corporations are ever opened to an honest accounting. Our country has been demoralized -- itself rendered corrupt, and reduced to a kind of bourgeois serfdom -- by the scale on which monies are appropriated and redistributed to political ends. And through the continuous transfer of legislative power to irresponsible courts, the possibility of democratic action has been progressively foreclosed. The time has now passed in which a change of government party could change the way public business is done. The last chance expired with Chuck Cadman’s vote on Thursday. Not the least consequence of Paul Martin’s successful putsch has been to clear the remaining obstacle to the ramming through Parliament of C-38, the government’s bill for institutionalizing homosexual “marriage”. As I have argued on many former occasions, this one horrific piece of legislation, done under pressure from the courts, delivers the coup-de-grace to the traditional, natural family upon which civilization is built. It will summon vast new powers for the state, to intrude into the private lives of the people; to suppress dissent; and to persecute the religious faithful. The reckless spending is only money that has been wasted, but could be earned again by the people from whom it was taken. It has enabled financial corruption, but even that could have been gradually cleaned up, and absorbed. However, the final destruction of the central institution upon which family life utterly depends -- the raising of children by mother and father -- cuts so much deeper. First we created a nation in which the unborn could be freely murdered; now we will have one in which the survivors are effectively orphaned. We have committed suicide, as a nation. Outwardly, and immediately, the consequences of what we have done will be seen in much different areas. We must deal with the renewed demand for separation in Quebec, and much deeper alienation in the West, where people begin to realize that they have been permanently disenfranchised. We will endure the continuing bleeding of economic opportunity, as both capital and our most talented citizens migrate to better prospects in the United States and beyond. But as a people, we have proved incapable of connecting the dots between our national decline, and the bottomless corruption of our legal and political order. I will leave it there. For what point can there be in a writer continuing to bemoan something that is simply lost? The dignity and decency of Canadian life had been leeching away, for so long, that we are now past writing any “lament for a nation”. The Canada of which I was once so proud now sleeps with the worms. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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