Election rhetoric about to heat up

(July 07) - I can feel the next Guelph municipal election shaping up just over the horizon. We still can’t see everyone, but we are starting to hear them. We have just six more months until nominations open and serious campaigning begins. Ten months after that we’ll be voting.

The Guelph Civic League recently released its annual council report card for 2008. It contained some surprises, and no politician did better than 86.7 per cent.

Ian Findlay of Ward 2 and Leanne Piper of Ward 5 tied for this first-place score.

Gloria Kovach wasn’t paying attention in class. She was concentrating on getting a job in Ottawa and ended the year with 35.7 per cent. All things considered, she might be proud of this result. It will solidify her support among the folk in town who want to bring back the old council.

Christine Billings was neither here nor there with a lackluster 42.9.

Watch out for a lot of strident, hysterical rhetoric coming your way in the next 18 months. It has started already.

The Farbridge opponents pretended to be outraged when city council delegated authority over some infrastructure projects to the city’s CAO. They want special council meetings every time a decision needs making.

What they don’t say is that Hans Loewig can deal only with projects already approved by council and is bound by standard tendering practices. Everything is above board. He must still work with other senior staff members who must countersign all decisions.

There will be a lot of building going on over the next year or two as the Conservatives steal a page from the socialist hymn book and spend their way out of the recession.

City council will take the money and fix up the transit terminal, the fire station and a load of roads.

Their opponents will spend their time building mountains out of molehills.

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I did a bit of thinking last week.

I was getting ready for Canada Day and my mind brought me back to our centennial year. Two of our most skilled politicians had top jobs in Parliament at the same time. Lester Pearson led the Liberal Party and Tommy Douglas headed up the NDP. A few years ago, when CBC listeners chose Douglas as the greatest Canadian, Pearson was a close runner-up.

Pearson and our current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, have one thing in common: they are the only two in our history to have led two consecutive minority governments without ever winning a majority. The difference is that Pearson knew how to make minority government work.

During his tenure, with Douglas holding the balance of power, we got Unemployment Insurance, the Canada Pension Plan, The Medical Care Act, a national student loan service, the 40-hour workweek, legislated vacation time and a national minimum wage.

Harper’s minority governments have been marked by contempt for other leaders and a bullying, confrontational style that has accomplished nothing of lasting value. He gets away with it because he serves without an effective Official Opposition.

Pearson had one other distinction. He is the only Canadian individual to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He got it in 1957 for developing United Nations Peacekeeping Forces in the Middle East.

How times have changed in half a decade.

Back then, we were known around the world as mediators, a country willing to stand between warring armies and keep them apart. We knew how to settle differences peacefully. Now, we are participants in a futile war halfway around the world. We have sent brave young men and women to kill and to be killed.

Too many come back wounded, emotionally scarred or psychologically damaged.

Pearson and Douglas would roll over in their graves if they saw where Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper have taken the country.