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.
This is a strange country, in strange times, with strange politics. When all was supposed to be anew, the land supposedly tired of a prime minister who stayed too long Ñ the April that T.S. Eliot said was the cruellest month is indeed a cruel ordeal for the new boy who was going to promise spring for all of us. Paul Martin is a ditherer, someone who waited rather late in his life to enter politics, so now being a pensioner can only last Ñ most everyone agrees Ñ just one term. If he even gets there. He couldn't decide, he sincerely argued, whether to go into politics, or going off to fight poverty in Africa, which greatly concerned him. So he waited until he made a fortune, before setting out in a nine-year job of getting Jean Chretien's keys to 24 Sussex Drive. To make the fortune, he arranged for his world-wide shipping empire to fly under flags of convenience Ñ Bermuda, Barbados and that famed naval port of Liberia, which not a single Liberal voter (let alone a journalist) could find on a map of the globe. All the while flying his own flag of convenience, our finance minister was going to slay the dreadful deficit, cutting transfer payments to the provinces Ñ leading to long lineups at the emergency wards and the hip replacements. All the while his tankers across the oceans avoided Canadian taxes. A strange country we abide. Hark! A new future prime minister appears on the horizon. Not only better looking than P. Martin, but blonde, and maybe even more rich. Belinda Stronach so much wants to be our new leader that she willingly sacrifices her $9 million annual stipend as CEO of the Magna auto parts empire. Daddy is a remarkable guy, granted. An immigrant from Austria who arrived here with four dollars in his pocket. Started, out of his garage at home, marketing windshield wipers. And now is in 22 countries and owns all but three of the largest race course tracks in the Excited States of America. Even smarter, he has the whole thing registered in Switzerland, so he doesn't have to pay Canadian taxes. While trying to arrange his university drop-out daughter, twice-divorced at 37, into the leadership of the new Conservative party and thus become prime minister one day. Paul, meet Belinda/Frank. Say hello to the Canadian taxpayer. How dumb are we? Not as dumb as Frank, apparently. Politically nave, he once wanted to be PM himself and tried as a Liberal candidate. The voters were not impressed. Nave? He has just destroyed whatever chances daughter has of getting a cabinet post in Stephen Harper's possible minority government by giving an interview to an Austrian paper that Belinda Ñ indicating a mere dalliance Ñ will be back running his shop in a few years. Nave? It's absolutely amazing how many billionaires there are in the world who have never heard of wire services Ñ that something blabbed in Vienna in another language is back in Toronto in fewer seconds than it takes to take your foot out of your mouth. Poor Belinda. Political career started by Daddy who now ends it. Poor Paul, the ditherer who was going to show us that a millionaire shipping baron knew how to make decisions and has such loose reins that when Parliament reconvened this week fewer than half of his majority government MPs showed up in the Commons Ñ after their two-week holiday with the salaries we pay them. The ditherer has had so much trouble making up his mind about calling a spring election, that he spent $473,873 in his (our) $8,000-an-hour Challenger jet for 40 trips campaigning around the country between Jan. 6 and April 18. This is a decision-maker? He makes Chretien look like Einstein. Paul, call Frank in Vienna. You'd have a lot in common. You could discuss tax dodges. X x x QUOTE OF THE MONTH Andre Ouellett, the $350,000-a-year president of Canada Post, suspended with pay because of the advertising scandal, testifying before the Commons committee: "I'm telling you, this teeny little $500,000 that was given to Canada Post, we spent all that money very well."
