Why The G20 and G8 Costs Aren't Sticking.

What should be a spending outrage is nothing more than a passing blurb. Some may wonder why. Not yours truly. Most Canadians consistently vote against this government and yet it remains in office. Perhaps that has something to do with the limp-along strategy favoured in the OLO. You remember that one: yeah, yeah, just you watch, Harper will explode any day now -- then the fruit will be ripe for an election and back to power we go. Or so the delusion goes.

Our last chance to defeat this government (and I mean that quite literally) comes this fall. Our platform will be in place and it will be time for the rubber to hit the road. The present crowd has some serious reassessing to do. If it doesn't look really good poll-wise, they will do what they do best and more than likely retreat, once again.

Canadians, by and large, can barely stomach this Prime Minister but they will continue to vote for him unless the OLO finally gets its act together. That means a couple of things: firstly, Michael has to come to terms with the concept that he won't drop dead if somehow he doesn't become prime minister. It won't be the end of the world either, should it happen.

Secondly, I don't know about you but I want him to realize that fact and then to find the intestinal fortitude to risk it anyway. The best interests of Canada must come before those of any particular leader or politician. Can any of you honestly say that this country is being slowly transformed for the better under the stewardship of this Prime Minister? One need only look at the conduct of the PM to confirm my argument -- why did he reportedly almost bust a gut when Flanagan spilled the beans about the continued success of "incremental" Conservatism. Stephen Harper does best when the Canadian people are as close to comatose as possible. Failing that, as long as they are mostly distracted or uninterested, that default strategy continues to work for him thereby returning another Conservative minority government.

Fake outrage from Liberals hasn't done it, so far. Neither has the scandal-of-the-week. Time to move on to something else that most Canadians can relate to -- a principled belief that this government is no damned good for the kind of Canada most of us happen to believe in. Canadians have to come to the realization that the road we're painfully travelling on now only leads to a dead-end where Canada will ultimately no longer be recognizable as a true liberal-democracy.

Afghan documents, individual accountability of ministerial exempt staff, Freedom of Information requests, the fuck parliamentary committees manual, you name it -- the well established pattern continues as long as this government stays in office.

We can't wish Conservatives away. Our fate quite literally as a nation will rest on whether the three opposition parties respond in tune to the doorbell of political destiny. Time to suck it up -- put away each of our own petty political considerations and vote this government out of office at the earliest opportunity.

Some of us may go down in that election, but Canadians will thank us for doing what had to be done. Some will have died a heroic death on the political battlefield -- but even those will be fondly remembered, for fighting the good fight and paying the ultimate personal cost in pursuit of a just and noble political end. Canada awaits. It needs a reason to bestow its full confidence in us. Are we up to that challenge? For this country's sake, I hope to hell that we really are.