The first of the last, last lazysupper
Harnessing the incredible (still-free) power of The Wayback Machine, I have retrieved the earliest available post on lazysupper.com. While not 100% certain, I’m pretty sure this is from the second iteration of my seldom-viewed site.
It’s a post from January 2006 about Canada’s PMPM—the Honorable Prime Minister Paul Martin—leaving office and Stephen Harper slithering into office.
Departin’ Martin, Harper’s Just Startin’
The results of Canada’s 36th general election should come as a surprise to no one. It was obvious that the “tide” was turning, but it should also have been obvious that it wouldn’t be a tsunami. We were all fed up with the feds since the sponsorship scandal broke, but it’s been clear that Canadians weren’t jumping with joy onto the Conservative bandwagon. Personally, I was expecting another (albeit it narrower) Liberal minority government.
Perhaps Paul Martin shouldn’t have gotten up on that stage and strummed the acoustic guitar like that so close to election day. For me, it was one of those “he’s making me feel embarassed” moments. Perhaps the Liberals shouldn’t have ripped off the Canadian public $100 million.
However, the hundred mill wasn’t such a factor to me. And if it was all about the money, why didn’t more people bitch about the cost another election after only 18 months of parliament? The 2004 election cost $275 million and change. This one will likely end up costing a similar amount.
Furthermore, the average length of a minority government is 18 months. Although not always brought fully to term, a newly elected government in Canada receives a five-year mandate. After a little bit of math, we see that three minority governments could fit quite comfortably within such a mandate. A bit more math ($275M x 3) reveals that three contemporary elections could effectively cost $825 million! With numbers like that we could afford EIGHT Adscams and still have enough left over for a couple of nasty mudslinging by-elections.
Sure, the Liberal sponsorship scandal was done behind doors by a select few shady characters. But the Conservatives and NDP got together as a whole and scammed us with their whining vote of non-confidence right to our faces.
It would be nice to see the guys and girls in Ottawa actually work together to get something done. But I guess it would be just too big a contradiction to expect politicians to put politics aside.
While the government changed again from Conservative to Liberal in the 19 years since I wrote that, not much else has.