A Good Beer Blog

The election is going to slide soon. I feel it in my achy joints:

• You have these words of Mr. Harper from 1997 popping up again:
  

  Bilingualism is largely propaganda, Mr. Harper tells the group. Canada “is basically an English-speaking country,” he says. In describing Canada’s political system, he says the New Democrats are worse than a party of liberal Democrats. “The NDP is kind of proof that the devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.” And on the Progressive Conservatives — the party that amalgamated with his Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party — he points out they were “in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion-on-demand.”

• In the campaign plane heading to Vancouver yesterday you have him saying these sorts of things:
  

  Harper suggested that most provincial and territorial leaders “hate” Martin with the notable exception of McGuinty. “And I wouldn’t want him behind my back,” joked the Tory leader, an apparent reference to the problems McGuinty has caused to Martin over the past two years…But, he said, he is bracing for an onslaught of attacks on himself and the party in the three weeks leading up to the Jan. 23 vote. While that worked in 2004, Harper said he doesn’t believe the Liberal strategy of personally demonizing him will be successful this time. Declining to discuss specifics, he said the Tories have a strategy to “blunt” the expected Liberal attacks. “Wait and see,” he said.

• Meanwhile, Jack Layton is not that complimentary over how relations with the US have been brought into the election:
  

  Mr. Layton, meanwhile, said it’s not [US ambassador] Mr. Wilkins, but Mr. Martin who should be blamed. “Canadians have known that Liberals will say anything in an election to get elected. I think now the ambassador has discovered the same thing,” he said in Burnaby, B.C.Mr. Layton said the Liberal Leader can’t lecture the United States on greenhouse gas reductions because Canada has done “much worse” than the Americans under the Liberals’ watch. “He talks about the global conscience. Where is his? The fact is, he’s electioneering. He’ll say anything to get elected and whipping up the rhetoric against [U.S. President] George Bush is very easy to do. The problem is he hasn’t delivered the goods.”

While it isn’t nice to be rude and going around saying other people “hate” other other people has a sort of dopey kid junior high feel to it, isn’t it about time we got back to the good old days of the shouting match? You know, Mulroney telling Turner in the debate that he has no spine after Tuner said he had no choice but to make political appointments chosen by the departing Trudeau? If we can’t expect high thought in this campaign can we at least get some nasty shots?

I was not going to write this every day but the gods do conspire and this is a pretty good election we have going in terms of ideas. I can’t believe I wrote that. I can’t believe I could actually write that with some basis in fact. Do you remember foreign policy? That means that your government considers what its role in the world is. All of a sudden, after almost years of some action but not much thinking about what we should be, the stumps are hearing some thoughts about what we might be to others and not just ourselves.

First, the Prime Ministers has gotten into a shouting match with the US over global warming policy. This was inevitable. Maybe the administration just realized that Rick Mercer was making fun of them on the government’s own broadcaster. Hey! There is nothing wrong with making a few pence off the CBC and having something to say as well I’ve always said. Anyway, it is a good bit of finger-pointery over issues that the Liberals do disagree with the Bush administration so why not have an argument. And I don’t mind if the US ambassador to Canada says something like this:

“It may be smart election-year politics to thump your chest and criticize your friend and your No. 1 trading partner constantly,” Wilkins said, “But it is a slippery slope, and all of us should hope that it doesn’t have a long-term impact on the relationship.”

as long as we get to say back that in under a year there is a very good chance that the relationship will be with a very lame duck president given the polls in the US.

Apart from the US relationship, the Conservative party has announced the first bit of its defence policy. The Babbling Man, Canada nicest and best informed amateur military commentator, has a good review of the four proposals all of which I agree with except for the resurrection of an airborne group. As far as I can tell, it is our superduper secret commando capacity of JFT2 that has been most effective in the war on terror. I’d say add another 650 of them rather than make a political move like paratroopers. What next? An aircraft carrier? Better also to consider simply another 3,000 to 5,000 infantry like the kind we are relying on in NATO’s work in Afganistan.

Then, the Haavaad man considers the sensible position of Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Star candidate and brain…such a brain, as to when it is right to use these sorts of troops. People thinking about foreign policy. Amazing.