Squandered loonies

By Gordon Henderson
The Windsor Star

Prime Minister Stephen Harper waves to supporters at his election night headquarters in Calgary, Oct. 14. (Andy Clark/Reuters)

Thirty-seven lost days and 300 million squandered loonies later, there's one simple election question that has yet to be given a satisfactory answer in either of our official languages.     

What the hell was that all about? To put it more delicately, why were Canadians, who had more important things to do this fall, from raking leaves to watching their life savings vanish, subjected to this pointless political circus?     

I don't know about you, but I deeply resent being fleeced out of $300 million in taxpayer money by self-centred politicians, beginning with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who would rather roll the campaign trail dice than face the daily grind of trying to build a constructive consensus in our fractured Parliament that would put Canada's future ahead of partisan point scoring and grudge settling.     

What could Canadians have done with the $300 million poured down the electoral drain - all for an "enhanced" minority that still lacks real clout - because Stevie Boy wasn't prepared to obey his own law and wait for the fixed election date next October?     

We could have built a state-of-the-art regional hospital. We could have built two engineering schools. We could have built two-dozen elementary schools. We could have saved the lives of thousands of African children who die every day from bad water and treatable diseases. We might even have saved a Big Three plant or two and kept industrial centres like Windsor from imploding.     

We could have done many useful things. But Harper and his minions chose instead to engineer a crisis where none existed, one that required a visit to the Governor General and the unleashing of the electoral dogs.     

I happen to think that Harper, apart from being an icy control freak who throttles dissent, has been a reasonably competent prime minister, so much so that I wanted his minority government to go the distance.     

But it turns out he's no different than all the others, just another power-hungry, me-first opportunist prepared to spend whatever it takes to gain total control and avoid the bleak art of compromise and negotiation.     

What made him do it? Bruck Easton, former president of the late and lamented Progressive Conservative party and the best MP Windsor never had - and now a Liberal - believes Harper was acutely aware the economy's best-before date was imminent and hoped to get to the polls before it turned rancid. "I thought this was a David Peterson exercise. He wanted to get the election in (former Ontario Liberal premier Peterson lost a shocker to Bob Rae in 1990 on the eve of a crushing recession) before the economy went bad," said Easton.     

He also thinks the Harper Conservatives were tracking the Barack Obama phenomenon and, mindful that Canadian Conservatives (with the exception of Joe Clark) historically only hold power while Republicans are in the White House, wanted to seal the deal before the Democrats win in November.     

But as much as anything, said Easton, the Conservatives were tired of not controlling Parliament, especially committees dominated by opposition MPs who were "having way too much fun."     

The Harperites almost made it. They were halfway home and playing footsie with majority status when the Wall Street meltdown began. "Everything just blew up and now the whole world is blown up. Everybody is bailing out banks," said Easton, a tax and investment lawyer.     

The economy is in for rough times. And so is Parliament. Easton expects the daggers will be out for both Harper and Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, and the next year will witness an increasingly nasty and dysfunctional House of Commons, culminating in an October election.     

In other words, we'll still get the fall election Harper promised us originally. What we've just experienced was a $300-million trial run.     

It must be nice to have that kind of money, our money, to throw away on an unprincipled dress rehearsal.