It was the Canadian Parliament’s darkest day, and at the same time one of its finest.
Each new round of voting began with a round of applause from the New Democrat benches and ended with whoops and cheers from the Conservatives whose majority might means they’ve voted down every motion so far.
I tried to watch it on CPAC but I couldn’t. It was too horrible. The sight of the Cons whooping it up like they were in a bar, or at a rodeo. The sight of Stephen Harper mocking the opposition by opening his mouth and showing his teeth…
Knowing that he was raping our democracy, wrecking our environmental defences, changing our country beyond recognition, and there was NOTHING they could do to stop him.
It was all more than I could bear eh?
And of course this made me want to vomit.
“You waste all that time in the House of Commons last night, and then do this waste of time on the rolling voting, which accomplishes nothing except wasting taxpayers money in the House of Commons – because it’s expensive to run the House of Commons – and then have the nerve to say we want to have Question Period,” he complained.
“This is, like, chutzpah, right?”
How cheap would that ghastly little Con ideologue sell our democracy?
But despite the horror of this day of infamy, and the atmosphere reminiscent of the last days of the Reichstag, I was hugely encouraged by the way the opposition refused to rollover even though they knew they couldn’t win.
Because it’s only by fighting like that can you expect to make Canadians understand what Harper and his Con regime are trying to do to Canada. So they can be motivated to resist. For resist they must if this country is to be a grand democracy instead of a sinister petro-state.
And for once I agree with Andrew Coyne.
“The opposition must be prepared to bloody the government’s nose again, and again, and go on doing so, for as long as these abuses continue. It must be prepared to do so, what is more, in the face of public indifference or even hostility. It cannot count on appealing to public sentiment. It has to teach the public to care. It has to teach them why it matters.”
Except that I’ll go further. I swear by everything I hold dear that I will work twice as hard as I ever have, with any and all progressive Canadians, to defeat those bastard Cons in the next election. I’ll hand out pamphlets, I’ll answer phones, I’ll sweep floors, I’ll do ANYTHING to help drive those hee hawing hogs from power.
And the day the Cons are finally defeated, and we can start to rebuild Canada, I STILL won’t be satisfied eh?
I’ll demand that every law the Cons ever passed be changed or declared null and void. I’ll demand that everything they ever did be investigated, and that they be put on trial for crimes against Canada and the planet. And hopefully sentenced to rot in one of their ghastly jails. For trying to change a country into a jungle.
And for trying to bully and muzzle its citizens.
Oh yeah. Some may settle for simply defeating the Cons.
But after what they did today. After this day of infamy. After what they’ve done to my Canada.
I’ll demand REVENGE . . .
