Open Mouths, Empty Heads

By Baxter

It's hard to imagine that there are any winners in the Canadian Parliamentary crisis. Everyone — from Stephen Harper and his Bush-like arrogance to Stephane Dion and his embarrassingly bad video — is coming off badly.

But we cats do have to blame Harper first and foremost. He needlessly touched off this fiasco by submitting a budget that not only didn't address the global economic meltdown but which gratuitously stuck thumbs in the Opposition's eyes. He practically forced the other parties to try to bring his minority government down. Now that Parliament has been dissolved and the smoke is clearing somewhat, there's no real reason that anyone — the Liberals, the Bloc, the NDP, or even his restive Tories — should trust, or work with, Harper again.

What a mess. Canada has been stuck in a minority-government rut for three years now, and we're not sure how they're going to get out of it, minus an election — which could yield another minority — or, as the Opposition was prepared to do, a coalition.

But there's one other thing that's more worrisome to us cats about all this. (That is, besides the fact that the Liberals need to choose a new leader NOW.) Harper, with his recklessness, may have unnecessarily stirred up new separatist sentiment in Quebec. “There's a portion of the [separatist] movement that grows among Quebec nationalists when they feel they've been rejected, by Ottawa or English Canada or other provinces,” a Canadian political scientist explained.

Didn't Stephen Harper learn anything from palling around with Bush and Rove? Demonize your opponents, and sooner or later it all comes back to bite and scratch you.

Maybe we cats are more unsettled about this than necessary. But on this 67th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, we can't help thinking about the perils of awakening a sleeping giant.