All I Really Want...

Disclaimer: This is my 100th post. So in honour of this momentous event, I’ve put on my naïve political blogger cap. I know the following is completely unrealistic – but I wanted to blog with a healthy dose of naïveté today… Why? Well, why not?

Despite the complexities of a minority government, the wheelings and dealings, the backroom politicking, today, I am going to talk about two issues that I think are so incredibly important that we shouldn’t be playing politics with them.

First, I’d like to given Stephen Harper’s Conservative Government credit because unlike their predecessors, they seem to sort of “get” what minority government is all about. Minority government is basically a special platform to campaign on until you win a majority. Once you win a majority, then you can really start to govern or run the show or what not.

I think that one of the reasons behind the fall of the Martin government is that they didn’t fully comprehend that they had a minority – which means in essence: Canadians were putting them on trial. The way things were run, smacked of a minority running around dressed up in majority clothing trying to act all majorityish. I know that my opinion is not a novel or innovative… but I wanted to put that paragraph in so that later I won’t be accused of not being able to give credit where credit is due and of being too politically biased.

That being said, naïve cap back on, all I want this holiday season, is for our government, my Prime Minister, (whether I voted for him or not, he’s still MY Prime Minister) to rally all 308 MPs from the different parties and stop playing politics with the following two things. They are just too important and lives depend on them.

So here we go, my wish list:

1) Climate change - Can we please stop pointing fingers and saying he said, she said. I am no less guilty of adding fuel to the fire on this, but I am getting sick of all the debating. Can we please just get on with it a do SOMETHING? anything? I want to know, dear government, what I, me, small being that I am, can do to reduce my contribution to global warming. I want direction, guidance, on how to make my apartment more fuel-efficient. I travel on a lot on airplanes, so I want to off set the emissions that come forth bursting from the plane’s rear. Heck, I want to lead a zero emission life! And all I am hearing from Ottawa is a lot of hot air. Let’s just do something! Enough already.

Also, can we please stop debating the science on this? For the non-believers (I am keeping my fingers crossed that despite the PM’s comments on “so – called greenhouse gases”, he does actually understand that no one is debating whether they are in fact, greenhouse gases any more...), yes so non-believers, can’t you ask your questions – explain what tools, answers, etc you need, so that we can all move on this together? Can’t you pick up some Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, read Science magazine, or watch the Inconvenient Truth? I don’t know, do what ever it takes so that the government can get some answers to your questions and that we can just move on with it?

Next on the list:

2) Proper respect for the lives of our women and men in uniform - I think that when this happened, I wasn’t blogging yet so I didn’t have a chance to express my outrage. Now we have a Prime Minister who claims to be a friend of the military. The thing that I don’t get is, how on earth a “friend of the military”, could dishonour the lives of Canadian soldiers by not doing them the service of having a full public debate on their mission in Afghanistan? Is that too much to ask? Why weren’t our MPs given the chance to discuss, debate, question, and examine how long the lives of our troops are going to be in danger for?
This isn’t a statement on our mission in Afghanistan. It’s just that I am worried that we are playing politics with Canadian lives by rushing a vote without a proper debate on Canada’s involvement in a war torn country.

Okay so that was quite a rant. But those two things have been bugging me for quite some time. As I said, completely naïve to believe that you can’t play politics on absolutely every issue during the trying times of minority government. But if I could have just two things these holidays, they would be: real movement on the climate change file, and an open, public debate on Canada’s mission in Afghanistan... Is that too much to ask?