The House of Commons is back in session and it’s very exciting.
Not.
MPs are debating whether or not to keep the long-census form and the long-gun registry.
There’s a theme at work here. If it’s long, it’s on the agenda. At least I can’t see any other reason for the petty preoccupations of this government.
I’ve been around a long (there’s that word again) time and I can’t remember when Canadian politics was as lame as it is now. Pierre Trudeau once went to the polls on “The Land is Strong” (not long) and was rightly trounced. He had already set the bar pretty high with: “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation” and “The Land is Strong” was a disappointing sequel.
Nonetheless, compared to the stupefyingly pointless debate over the long-form census, it’s vintage Winston Churchill.
Our prime minister seems to think Canadians believe that the right to bear unregistered long guns should be enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And while we’re at it, we don’t need no stinking long forms.
I have news for you Mr. Harper: Canadians don’t care!
They do care about the small stuff like health care and education, but they’re not long, so I guess that’s why they’re not on the agenda
The long-gun registry is on today’s agenda. I could save a lot of greenhouse gas and solve it in 15 seconds. The Canadian Association of the Chiefs of Police says it helps fight crime. That’s good enough for me. Next?
As for the stupid form, only a nation of bureaucrats would argue about a census form. And Trudeau said the state had no place in the bedrooms of the nation. He was completely silent on counting the bedrooms of the nation.
So where’s my pencil? Count me in!
These twin follies are just the tip of the iceberg. Our nation’s future leaders can’t afford higher education, which means we have another generation of right honourable doofuses in the making. Instead, the government wants to spend about $16 billion of our tax dollars on fighter jets since the Russians might violate our air space. Not sure why. To purchase duty free?
These must be short jets or else the government wouldn’t want them. Just sayin’.
I keep hoping I’m just dreaming of an old Monty Python skit — the Ministry of Long Things or something, and I’ll just wake up and everything will be relevant and meaningful again.
It will, won’t it?
Paul Sullivan is a Vancouver-based journalist and owner of Sullivan Media Consulting;
vancouverletters@metronews.ca.
