Liberal Party Antics

Or, The Gomery Report for Americans

When people outside of Canada think of a liberal party, they think of a room full of flakey hippies smoking grass and experimenting with free love. In other words, Democrats. Fair enough. In Canada, the term liberal has taken on a whole new meaning. That’s because the federal political party that has been in power for as long as anyone can remember is called “The Liberal Party”. They aren’t so much left leaning or even right leaning, but instead tend to stay centralized, collecting huge quantities of taxpayer’s dollars while trying their best not to rock the boat.

This model has proved to be quite successful for them, that is until recently. Over the last several years, the Liberals have participated in some “back room shenanigans” that even typically apathetic Canadians are getting worked up about. The outcome may very well be that the general population decides to put down their beers, stand up and call for the resignation of the governing party! Or not. Either way, it’s made for some pretty interesting headlines, and is worth some further discussion.

But first, a little background for those readers located south of the border in the great US of A. (Readers in Canada or any other country that recognizes life beyond its own borders, feel free to skip ahead) There is a large land mass north of the 49th parallel. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe because any map of the USA that’s made in America shows nothing but a great void up north. But the land mass is real. I can prove it. I live there. The great land mass is called North America. The country that occupies that land is called Canada.

French Whine
In Canada we have both English and French speaking people. The English live pretty well everywhere, while the French are all clustered in Quebec (and Provincial capitals, but that’s a really long story to be saved for another time). The dual language system in Canada is called bilingualism, and the government tells us it works really well.

A decade or so ago, the French people in Quebec felt unloved and tried to separate from Canada. They voted on it in a referendum, and the “let’s split” vote failed by the slimmest of margins. The French blamed the loss on non-French people living in Quebec. They have since been doing their best to make non-French people feel extra unwelcome, so that there will be fewer of them around when Quebec has its next referendum. Referendums are a fairly regular occurrence in Quebec. It’s a French thing.

Anyhow, the Government of Canada is made up of people from all over the country. However, those in the positions that have some power are primarily French speaking. It’s hard to explain why, but it’s related to bilingualism and that provincial capital phenomena I mentioned earlier - a balance of power sort of thing. So, for those in power, English is usually their second language. This explains why whenever you see a Canadian politician on American television (which only ever happens on South Park), they sound like Pepe LePew. It also explains why Canadian politicians have lots of close ties to businesses in Quebec.

At What Cost Unity?
Several years ago, the Canadian Liberal government decided that Canada really needs Quebec. As a result, the government has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Quebec to try to convince them not to have another referendum. The government calls this a sponsorship program, and like bilingualism, the government tells us it works really well.

But, who does it in fact work really well for? (This is where it gets really interesting. Those readers who skipped ahead earlier should start paying attention again.) The sponsorship money goes to organizations in Quebec that are best positioned to promote Canada, organizations like consulting firms, marketing groups and brothels (they’re legal in Quebec – life’s actually not so bad there). And, of course, these organizations all happen to be run by “associates” of Liberal government officials.

So far, none of this should have raised any eyebrows (except for maybe the brothels, which have been known to raise more than eyebrows). After all, efforts to keep the country united could only have the best interests of all Canadians at heart, right? Even so, one day it occurred to some non-Liberal Party individuals that it was time to investigate this “perfectly legitimate government business” being done “strictly for the good of the country”. They began by comparing a list of those in Quebec who received government sponsorship money to a list of the biggest monetary supporters of the federal Liberal Party. The lists were practically identical. Hence, the Liberal Party was getting huge campaign contributions from groups that had first received buckets of federally collected tax dollars.

Gomery To The Rescue!
The implications were enormous. Money laundering is illegal, after all, and a government caught doing so had better be prepared for taxpayer revolt. That was the situation in Canada. It was a scandalous scenario, requiring immediate, hardnosed action. In typical Canadian fashion, when the going gets tough and we are facing a battle we form a committee, and the sponsorship scandal was no exception . In this case we appointed a committee of one – Justice John Gomery. Mr. Gomery was handed the unenviable task of getting to the bottom of all the sponsorship intrigue. His first task? He’d need to learn how to speak French. The rest would be easy.

Still, committee work is grueling, requiring long hours and many months, which is just what the Liberal Party was counting on. Another Canadian trademark in addition to forming committees is apathy, and the Liberals were counting on the Canadian public to be so distracted by the resumption of hockey that the findings of the inquiry would pass unnoticed.

Well, Mr. Gomery’s findings were released a week ago in a document aptly entitled “The Gomery Report”. Unfortunately for the Liberals, Canadians have one more trademark, that of multitasking. So, despite our fervent passion for the return of “the good old hockey game”, Canadians were equally fervent in our disdain for what the Gomery report exposed.

The Gomery inquiry had involved countless interviews with everyone from current and past Prime Ministers (for those of you in red states, the Prime Minister is the Canadian version of the President), to CEOs of Quebec corporations. The complete and utter disrespect for the Canadian public displayed by the government officials was astounding, although not completely out of character for politicians. Our past Prime Minister (OK America, fifty points to the first person who can actually name our last PM) was callous enough to ask:
“What’s a few million doll-airs ‘ere and zhair? Zee government budget is very big. ‘Ow could we possibly keep track of every few million doll-airs?”
But hey, at least he was telling the truth, sort of. The rest of our elected officials claimed with an air of Bart Simpson smugness “I didn’t do it!” This is in itself puzzling, because it suggests they all knew it was going on but claimed they didn’t know who was doing it. I call it the Bill Clinton technique - deny, deny, deny…and pray there’s no photographic evidence.

If the politicians were playing the arrogant and innocent cards, their Quebec counterparts were trying to trump them with the “stupidity” card. There was the president of a Quebec marketing firm who saw revenues jump from $85,000 one year to $1.8 million the following. The money was reputed to have come from the Government of Canada, but the paper trail was a bit fuzzy (probably because it was all in French). There was no record of where the money went. The company hadn’t hired any new employees or moved into a bigger location. They hadn’t even printed T-shirts with “Canada Allons Zee!” (Let’s Go Canada!) on them. When asked if he had any recollection of any of this, the best the president under investigation could muster was a Reagan-esque “I don’t remember…”, which is a phrase that Justice Gomery became quite familiar with while interviewing folks from Quebec.

The End Of The Liberal Era?
Stories like these abound in the Gomery report, and we Canadians are really mad at the Liberal Party. To fuel the fire, the CBC, our national news service, has posted the entire report on its Website. None of us have actually read it, but we’re mad just knowing it’s there. We’re so mad that we plan to wait around and see what the other Canadian political parties plan to do about it.

Right now, the other parties are sort of thinking of calling an election, but if they do, they don’t want it to interfere with Christmas. We Canadians love the holiday season. Why spoil it with bringing down a corrupt political party? So, if there actually is an election, it will probably occur in the Spring, an appropriate time for renewal. That’s when we’ll all head back to the polls and, yet again, vote Liberal.