The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The scribbler, you must understand, lived in Washington for five years, covering the White House, the years of Reagan and Bush Senior, and Senator Gary Hart. You remember presidential candidate Gary Hart, tall and handsome, happily married, who took Donna Rice to Bimini in the Caribbean and unfortunately was photographed with Donna sitting on his lap ? they undoubtedly discussing political strategy. Gary claimed they slept on different boats. Which was true. Gary slept on his yacht and Donna slept on his dinghy. Poor Gary. There he was, six inches away from the White House. The other thing that puzzled this puzzler is how the Americans get away with so little people running them. Prime Minister Paul Martin has just announced a cabinet of 39 bodies. To run a country of 32 million. President George Bush has a cabinet of 12 bodies. To run a country of 280 million. Absolutely amazing. If John Kerry is elected president on Nov. 2, he will assemble a cabinet of twelve (12). Just as every other president has done. Absolutely amazing how that nation happens to run so well. In this bloated land of porkdom, every prime minister vows to cut down on the unneeded supplicants that could fill a football squad. When Jean Chretien was first elected in 1993, he promised the innocent voters that he would cut down on Brian Mulroney?s ridiculous 40-member cabinet. He did it with "just" 22 ministers ? backed up by eight junior ministers. Eventually, of course, the Chretien cabinet grew to 39 absolutely invaluable members. Paul Martin promised to do away with all this unnecessary baggage. Guess what? Again, 39 at the pork barrel. It gets worse. In a 135-seat minority government, one of every two Liberal MPs elected on June 28 was named by Martin as cabinet minister or parliamentary secretary. That means 67 Members of Parliament will get extra pay and all the privileges that the lowly backbenchers do not enjoy. It's lovely being in power. More than one academic has earned a PhD by proving that Canada is the most over-governed jurisdiction on the globe. Civic politicians with their bureaucrats, topped by municipal politicians with their bureaucrats, below provincial politicians with all their $100,000-plus bureaucrats, all wanting to get to the top rung of the trough in Ottawa with all those politicians and their bureaucrats who apparently can't get by with the 12 cabinet ministers who run the most powerful nation on earth. In this dysfunctional country, that doesn't run by any logic, Prince Edward Island has a population of only 138,514 ? about the size of the minor British Columbia city of New Westminster. And has four seats in the House of Commons. Which works out to one MP for every 34,628 people. B.C., with a population of 4,095,934, has one MP for every 120,468 people. Ever wonder why the types beyond the mountains hate Ottawa? The population of Quebec has now dropped to 24.1 per cent of the Canadian total. But thanks to the 1974 Representation Act, no province can have fewer seats in the Commons than it had in 1976. As a result, Quebec cannot drop below 75 seats even though its demographic weight warrants only 68. And so Quebec holds its 75 seats, fast-growing Alberta and B.C between them have only 64 seats. Western alienation? We have what is laughingly-called the senior chamber of sober second thought. The four Atlantic provinces, with their small populations, have more Senate seats than Alberta and B.C. put together. In 2003, the Senate sat for exactly 67 of the 365 days of the year. Absolutely fantastic how those inefficient Yanks can get by with so few at the top. X X X AND ANOTHER THING With all this talk about the disgraceful figure of only 60 per cent of voters showing up on June 28, think about the two nationalities on earth famous for being stubborn individuals who will not allow anyone to push them around. The French and the Aussies, most would say. France and Australia are the only two countries where voting is compulsory. You're fined if you don't show up. X X X QUOTE OF THE YEAR Shaquille O'Neal, the 340-pound basketball centre just traded by the Los Angeles Lakers to Miami, on returning from a visit to Athens was asked if he had seen the Parthenon. He replied, "I don't remember the name of any of the night clubs we went to."
