FDR REDUX?

FDR REDUX?
by Timothy Rollins, Editor and Publisher

June 3, 2002

For my American readers and friends, those of us living north of the 49th parallel are and have been saddled since late 1993 with an extremely inept and unlikable fellow in office as Prime Minister of Canada - Jean Chretien (right). Unlike the United States' fixed election cycles, the party in power has a substantial advantage in controlling its destiny somewhat in that it can call for early elections if they feel it will play in its favor. It has been known to backfire on occasion, but generally it works to the advantage of the incumbent. However, no term of Parliament can run longer than five years, after which the Governor-General must dissolve that session of Parliament and drop a writ of election, thus beginning a campaign lasting no less than 28 and no longer than 36 days.

Like the United States, Canada has a bicameral legislature - a Senate that is occupied by a bunch of folks who get there through patronage appointments - in other words, if you make a large enough donation to the party in power or have sufficient pull in other ways, you get in when there is an opening - period. The catch is, like Canada's Supreme Court, you're out the door at age 75, which in a way is a good thing in that it allows for the guaranteed infusion of new talent as long as nepotism is not a factor, which hopefully it isn't. It also has a House of Commons, which until the last Census had 301 seats and is based on population statistics from across the country. Unlike the House of Representatives, the Commons increases with the population of the country and the next parliament will have 308 seats in the Commons.

In his 1993 election campaign, Chretien and his Liberal party made a pledge to scrap the universally hated 7% Goods and Services Tax (GST) imposed under the Conservative government of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Mulroney had so badly destroyed the integrity and credibility of the Federal Tories (Conservatives) that they had gone from a majority of 178 seats in the Commons to a total of two - that's right - 2 seats. Keep in mind that in order to even have official standing as a caucus you have to have at least 12 seats, so for all intents and purposes, they were a nonentity for the next session and remained that way until the next election four years later in 1997.

Suffice it to say, like just about all other politicians, Chretien failed to keep his word, and the GST remains in place to this day. When MP (Member of Parliament) John Nunziata voted against the Liberal Party's budget because it failed to remove the GST, Chretien promptly and publicly booted him out of the Party, Nunziata walked across the floor of the Commons and sat with the opposition. Reelected in 1997 as an Independent, Chretien and the Liberal machine saw to it that he lost in 2000 when another election was held.

While Chretien is under the delusion that he in charge, pretty much anyone plugged into the political scene up here knows that the real power belongs to his wife Aline, the de-facto Prime Minister - especially in light of recent events of the last couple of weeks.

We begin with the firing from Cabinet of now-former Defense Minister Art Eggleton (left). The former Mayor of Toronto was relieved of his Cabinet post, effectively putting the military under Chretien's direct control on the pretext of Eggleton awarding a $36,500 contract to a woman who at one time had been his lover. The fact that they are no longer in a current relationship is immaterial to Aline Chretien; she got in a huff reportedly, and with Chretien himself under a huge ethical cloud and a recent Ipsos-Reid poll in The Toronto SUN stating that not only do 68% of Canadians feel that Chretien should resign, there is even a majority (58%) of Liberal party supporters who feel the same way as well.

With the mounting ethics scandals all pointing one way or another at Chretien in much the same way that scandals one after another were pointing at former President Bill Clinton in the United States a few years back, and with Chretien not having the Teflon personality that Slick Willie seemed to have, Chretien is using the same 'duck and cover' tactics Clinton did to deflect attention from his total lack of integrity. Now we have Paul Martin, Chretien's finance minister and BY FAR the brightest star in Chretien's Cabinet - the man who straightened out the country's checkbook, now seriously considering leaving because of Chretien's megalomaniacal obsession with staying in power even though his time has long since passed. Chretien is publicly rebuking members of his Cabinet and party that he even suspects might be considering making a run however indirect at his position as party leader, while he is out trying to either tie or break FDR's record of four terms.

With the Liberals having leadership problems in addition to the ones the federal Tories are having with former Prime Minster Joe Clark (remember his memorable nine months in office?), the Canadian Alliance with Stephen Harper (right) firmly at the helm, having worked their problems out with the removal of Stockwell Day as party leader, are now in a position to step forward to work with the federal Tories and unite the Right in a way that will position Canada in moving forward to not only bring it into play as a serious player on the world stage, but to also send a message to the world that like the United States, it too, is indeed the class of the world. ***

Photo of Timothy Rollins courtesy of staff files
Photo of The Right Honourable Jean Chretien MP, Prime Minister of Canada courtesy of the Liberal Party of Canada
Photo of Art Eggleton (Liberal - ON) courtesy of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Photo of Stephen Harper (Alliance - AB) courtesy of the Canadian Alliance