Congratulations on your victory in the last election! After being labeled the 'right driver in the wrong car' for all of these years, you finally turned the tides (at least in Quebec) and got enough of your people voted in to allow you to become the leader of the opposition. This, despite my voting for a candidate from another party in my riding, is something I see as a potentially Good Thing overall. Not to mention the fact that the stricken, shocked and confused faces over at BQ headquarters made me positively gleeful.
In the days following the election, I awaited your first statements. Those first statements would set the tone for at least the front half of your reign as the Leader of the Official Opposition. I was really looking forward to hear which of Harper's vulnerable points you would hit the hardest and the most often (because that's all you CAN do, really), and hitting those points would allow you to be the 'voice of the people' you have claimed to be. Here comes Jack, he knows what we're pissed about the most (other than being pissed at central Ontario for giving Harper a friggen majority).
And one of the first things you talked about was... the Constitution? Wait. What?
You mean to tell me that you and your handlers do not realize that talk about the constitution and/or sovereignty issues and/or looking backwards is EXACTLY what got the BQ so roundly kicked in the ass, thereby opening the door to you and your brigade of students and activists? You don't realize that the more Duceppe and the BQ pounded on the sovereignty nail, and the more they paraded around old, rusty, crusty battle-axes feebly screeching 'separate!', the more they made their own irrelevance obvious, and the more people decided to tick whatever name was beside the letters 'N', 'D', and 'P'? And so you decided to stir up the mucky riverbed of constitutional issues, just when the damn water was starting to clear a little?
Allow this arm-chair, keyboard-wielding amateur to tell you a few things that your entourage of professionals don't seem to be making very clear to you (because I refuse to think that they don't know this...).
1. People did not vote for local candidates. They voted along party lines. They didn't vote for the Vegas Candidate, they just 'Voted For Jack'. A monkey could have been used as a face on a campaign sign and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference. People in Quebec are tired of backwards-looking and backwards-thinking candidates that are mired somewhere back in 1992. They voted for YOU. Smarten up and be more careful about what comes out of your mouth. And while I'm at it, Mr. Experienced Mulcair needs to back off on Bin-Laden-Isn't-Dead conspiracy theories if you're going to attempt to retain credibility for your party, but I digress...
2. If the Canadian electoral system weren't broken, you'd be Prime Minister, but the House of Commons would be a pot-pourri of MPs from across the different parties. Because if you want Jack as PM, you have to vote for the local monkey with the letters 'NDP' next to their name even if that monkey was off campaigning in Vegas, or holed up in the McGill ghetto somewhere studying for the PoliSci final. This reality makes you even more important - you ARE your party, at this point. So watch your mouth and focus on important things.
I want to be clear on one thing: I do not have a problem with young or inexperienced candidates wanting to throw their hats in the ring and trying (and succeeding) in getting elected. The Fat White Men in Suits who run things need to be kicked in the teeth every once in a while by the People. New people that go around questioning the status quo, asking why the same old inefficient and corrupt goings-on continue to go on, is a Good Thing. But it's only a good thing if the young gun ran a campaign, convinced his constituents that s/he was a better candidate, and got voted in with the expectation that, if elected, s/he would be off to Ottawa and would go gladly. A bunch of these newly-minted MPs expected to be place-holders, a face to put on an NDP campaign poster that fully expected to lose their elections and go on with their regular lives, using the experience as something that looks good on a resume. I just hope this crop of unexpectedly-elected will take advantage of the big fat gift they've been given and do something good with it.
But back to Jack... What are the important things you should be talking about? Oh, look, it's the start of a new list...
1. Gas, gas, gas, Jumping Jack Flash. Today is Tuesday, which everyone knows is gas-price-hike day. The day that the criminally greedy fat cats at the oil companies make trillions in profit just by sending out an email to gas stations that reads, "It's Tuesday, you know what to do." You should be the pissed-off voice of all Canadians (including the morons that gave Harper his majority) about the price of gas. My closest gas station is selling the stuff at close to $1.45 per liter today: so ask me again if I give a rat's ass about the friggen constitution. Here's what you should do: every Monday, you stand in front of which ever is the closest gas station to you, and you say, "When the price of gas goes up tomorrow morning - and we all know tomorrow is Tuesday and the prices will go up - I would like for you to help me hold PM Harper accountable by sending his office emails and by calling his phone lines, asking why he does nothing to help regular Canadians, working people and families and small business owners, be able to buy affordable, Canadian-made gas." Then you say, "Taxes collected from the sale of the currently over-priced gas should be invested into reliable, efficient, safe and clean public transportation, and into developing Canadian-made alternatives to gas that we will then be able to sell to the world." You do that, and you'll win the next election.
2. I, along with thousands of other Canadians, would really like to have a family doctor. Anyone qualified will do: male or female, recognized as an MD, born here or elsewhere... as long as I can get an appointment within, say, 8 weeks, and actually get a checkup and a few tests done to make sure I'm doing alright. The Constitution does not make family doctors magically appear and take on new patients. The Constitution does not perform pap smears and breast exams, does not check my blood pressure and cholesterol levels and cannot tell me if that mole I don't like the look of should be looked into further. The Constitution is far, far, far down on my list of priorities right now and every time it is mentioned, my blood pressure goes up and I swear I will never vote for you as long as you keep bringing it up, so we're both worse off than we were before. You need to talk about the doctors and moldy hospitals that we have to line up to get into, and make it Harper's fault - he wants to buy fighter jets while Grandma's melanoma goes undetected, oh the travesty. Because it IS a travesty.
3. Anything else BUT the Constitution. The economy, employment insurance, job creation, small business, schools and higher education, the aging population and the financial and emotional strain it puts on younger people... talk about any issue EXCEPT the constitution (and language issues) and I will lend you my ear. But I promise you, I will shut down, take my ball, and go home if you keep ripping the scab off of the wounds of sovereignty. I can't take any more hot air about referendums and the constitution. I. Just. Can't. The BQ is comatose, the PQ is fizzling and sputtering, and there's finally a glimmer of hope that people here are accepting the inevitable dominance of English in the world, that they understand that the rise of English is not a plot against them that they need to take personally and that they can live and thrive in French without isolating themselves into a banana republic, and what do you do? You tote out the C-word. Stop it. No, really. Just... stop it!
It's going to be a long and depressing four years with Harper at the helm. I am worried, depressed and ashamed to have him as the leader of my beloved country. Much as some reasonable Americans contemplated moving here during the Bush Reign, I wondered if I could move to live under the reign of President Obama instead of here, with Harper. The Republican Tea-Party changed my mind back for me, but that doesn't make me any happier to have Harper. What would make me happy would be an official opposition that actually sounds and behaves like they oppose Harper and his ilk WITHOUT having to hear about the Constitution. If people wanted that, they would have stuck with the has-beens at the BQ. YOU got the votes, now stop beating a dead horse.
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