Harper & Dion Served Up Mallick-Style

Heather Mallick, writing in The Guardian, filed this post-mortem on our election and, if nothing else, it should lift your spirits:

There are three wings to Canadian political life. Harper, the Conservative PM, is a rightwing extremist, although he doesn't suck up like Cameron. He is an anti-choice, pro-prison, poverty-ignoring, food-safety-privatising, arts-ridiculing, Afghanistan war-loving, cowboy hat-wearing guy.

The Liberals, the nation's natural rulers, are in the middle of the road like an expiring woodchuck. They are sensible people without passion; they own just the one house; they're New Labour without the ratlike cunning, without the Cherie, shall we say. The New Democratic party is old Labour.

Harper began passing laws making Canada more like the States. His most complimentary adjective was "CEO-like". He wants life sentences for 14-year-old murderers, of whom we have maybe three in a nation of 33 million citizens. He wants to build more prisons, ban safe-injection sites for heroin addicts, privatise universal healthcare, make the foetus not just a person, but someone who can dress for success – you know the drill.

...So we voted. As in the movie Groundhog Day, where the post-election morning was the same as the last one, with the result being another minority government born of a quiet desperation that won't be soothed until the Liberals get a new leader, not a sweet smart guy like Stéphane Dion, but someone with claws like Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian you Brits took to your bosom some years ago.

Thanks for sending him back. It's getting hot here, our trees are sawdust and our ice is melting. Canada needs a smart decisive cynic. Anything to haul that crushed woodchuck off the road.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/16/canada-georgebush