Roger Varley has been in the news business almost 40 years with The Canadian Press/Broadcast News, Uxbnridge Times-Journal, Richmond Hill Liberal and Uxbridge Cosmos. Co-winner with two others of CCNA national feature writing award. In Scout movement over 30 years, almost 25 as a leader. Took Uxbridge youths to World Jamboree in Holland. Involved in community theatre for 20 years as actor, director, playwright, stage manager etc. Born in England, came to Canada at 16, lived most of life north and east of Toronto with a five-year period in B.C.
Time to put politicians on notice
Is it just me, or does anyone else have the feeling that Parliament and the inmates thereof have lost all credibility?
Apart from Jim Flaherty's budget, has any meaningful piece of legislation emanated from that once august body in the last several months? If so, I'm hard-pressed to remember it.
For months, we have had to watch in embarrassment as the men and women who inhabit Parliament - presumably to watch over the affairs of the country and to govern with sober deliberation - have engaged in petty partisan politics, name calling, game playing and other childish behaviour. The truly frightening thing about it is that all parties - not just one - have been equally guilty of wasting time and taxpayers' dollars.
To be sure, the Afghan detainee issue and the Helena Guergis-Rahim Jaffer affair need to be examined thoroughly. But Stephen Harper's game-playing with thousands of redacted documents and the Opposition's daily squawking of “not fair” on the Afghan issue is not the way to do it. And the Opposition's continuing calls for answers on the Guergis affair, when Harper has already turned it over to the RCMP for investigation, do nothing to help that situation.
There are ways for Parliament to handle those problems without delaying all the other work that needs to be done. Work like addressing the growing unemployment problem, the disappearing manufacturing sector, the crises in the forestry and natural resources industries and the severe problems with the health system. Those are the problems we need tackled. Those are the types of things we sent our representatives to Ottawa to handle.
Instead, for more months than I care to count, we've had Harper acting like a school-yard bully, daring the Opposition to force an election, all the while knowing they are in no financial position to do such a thing; we've had Michael Ignatieff hop-scotching around looking for something on which he can take a position and, in the process, looking more like a bumbler than his predecessor, Stefan Dion; we've had Jack Layton desperately trying to make his NDP look as though it were above all the nonsense but succeeding only in coming across as an opportunist; and we've had Gilles Duceppe demanding accountability from the government of a country which he is dedicated to tearing apart.
Given the current state of affairs and makeup of Parliament, our federal representatives would find it hard to agree that the sun rises in the East.
I wrote in a column a while back that I will no longer cast a vote in any provincial or federal election. I'd like to hedge that statement a bit. I might consider casting a ballot if an independent candidate was on the ballot.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if there were more independents in Parliament than party politicians. Would everything grind to a halt? Likely not. After all, there are no party politics in our municipal government, yet they get the job done, they pass legislation and they don't waste endless hours and days bickering (well, maybe a few minutes now and again).
It seems to me, everyone who voted in the last federal election needs to contact their MP - regardless of party affiliation - and let them know all their jobs are at stake in the next election if Parliament doesn't clean up its act and get back to doing some serious work.
Tell me, am I wrong?
