Political games.

 

Political games.

As far as I can see, Canada is on fire. I will not name all the provinces that are burning. I am glad that it’s over. Don’t laugh. According to a friend, yesterday they caught the woman who was setting the fires. According to another friend, they caught a First Nations person who was setting the fires. I don’t know if they were setting fires only in Canada or also in the US, but we should be free from fires now. Sad ha ha moment, we are not.

Canada is now heavily involved in the war in Ukraine. I don’t know if the Russians can hurt us, but it worries me. Less than ten of their nuclear weapons can finish us. We are the country with the most fresh water in the world and I see us fighting about water. Our Health Care system is failing us and our Education is getting worse. Public opinion steered by politicians is causing us to irritate China, which is a major trade partner.

Sitting here, I am worried about the future. Yet the number one newsmaker in Canada is the public inquiry into Chinese interference in the elections of a couple of members of political parties. The government, as if they had nothing better to do, is all tied up with foreign interference in our elections, talking about it for days and weeks.

I am not a political insider, but I am afraid that we have foreign interference in our politics. It may be from outside the country or by people on the inside who don’t have the well-being of most of us at heart. From where I am, it looks the same. Money in politics is used to sway people to vote against their best interests. I would love to see the accounting of our last provincial elections. How much each party spent on campaigns and where the money came from.

What I do know is that in 2008, the chief electoral officer Lorne Gibson was fired after publicly pointing out that 27% of voters were left off the list. The NDP rehired him and he discovered problems with Jason Kenney winning the leadership against Brian Jean. Kenney won the next provincial election and eliminated the Chief electoral officer’s position. Here is something I am more interested in than the possible Chinese interference in our electoral process, but may never know the truth.

I am all for keeping our elections in Canada and Alberta fair and not shaking public confidence. Yet when the last provincial elections were going “neck and neck” all the way and then announced as “another miracle on the prairies” I was taken aback. I am a firm believer in the possibility of miracles, but not as far as winning elections in mysterious ways. If people answer polling questions one way leading to elections, I can’t see how they would change their opinion so fast when nothing happened to cause it. If any, I expected our elected Premier to have lost votes after breaking the law as to the best of my knowledge she did.

I am still spinning from the opposition, demanding that the Prime minister resign over the Chinese interference in our elections. I would demand of him election reforms that he has been promising for eight years, but the mood changed again. The Chinese are all but forgotten and we have a new demand for ministerial resignation, now because of Paul Bernardo. That rotten individual and his girlfriend Karla Homolka, tortured and killed young girls, including Karla’s sister. and filmed it.

The RCMP at the time, discovered who he was but failed to check the attic in his home for the incriminating evidence, so they offered Carla immunity if she witnessed against Paul. She, of course, did, and they jailed him for life. She got 12 years. When they found the tapes, they couldn’t touch her, but she perhaps was the one more guilty. Now the parole board, free of political interference, is releasing him into a medium-security facility and the opposition wants a minister to resign. Again, the government is spending money and time on something that will make no difference to most of us. Bummer. Why don’t they deal with the depleted state of our armed forces instead? Figure out how to protect our northern borders when and if the Russians storm in after the war in Europe, on their way to the USA, I say.

No, the Bernardo case is dominating the news. I was never a minister or even a council member in a little town, but in my job, they swamped me with thousands of reports, directions, and trivial information each day. Now the opposition is wasting valuable parliament time blaming a minister for not noticing some old memo about Paul Bernardo, wanting him to resign. I watch from the sidelines how the game of politics is played. Some politicians play it because they want to improve the country, province, or the lives of the people. They fail and the country is on fire with more to come. We have so many homeless people, drug addicts and you name it, that it would take years to correct. We expect leaders to solve the problems, but they don’t. Most are in the game for power and possibly personal gains. The people let themselves be led from one disaster to another as long as they have their tiny gains and only listen to what they consider “positive”, ignoring the power they have to make changes. Those on the bottom are suffering the most, while those on the top or middle specialize in not seeing their suffering. Just like Karla Homolka, we let evil win and cry for revenge instead of trying to stop it.

Did any of us even say a brief prayer for the migrants in Greece who drowned last week trying to get a better life? I doubt it. We probably didn’t watch the news when it showed their boat.