It has become necessary for me to beak off about being a Canadian. While watching the news, or reading the 'popular' press, I become infuriated by how the people we elect can stand there in front of the cameras and say the things they do...with apparent impunity. Only in politics, I've heard it said. So, in response to all of that, I decided that if I can't write a letter to the editor that will get printed, I'll guarantee my own forum. What I have to say, so far, isn't likely to be censored by anyone. I paid for the medium, it's my party and I'll yell if I want to. With all the hate-mongering and fertilizer-bomb instructions on the Web, blustering about cowardice in Canadian politics is not going to elicit a raid by the Men in Red Serge, is it? I mean, if our folksy prime minister with his cute facial tic can feed his buddies tax dollars without a visit from the Mounties, well, hell, I'm in good shape. So, bluster I will. Eventually the search engines will find "Political Comment" and I can really set about raising the hackles of Canadian Surfers everywhere, including those misguided transplants from Malibu down in Mahone Bay...

So here goes...

It seems as though we Canadians are prone to a rather passive and docile approach to politics! We look towards Ottawa, and see a toxic fog of rhetoric and masked issues, and proceed to shrug it off as being impossible to change. Change into what, you might ask. Aren't they all the same at some basic level, so what's the use of trying, you might say. Not only might you say it, you do! Now what kind of a defeatist attitude is that? Remember, those goons in Bytown are counting on the fact that we roll over and play dead.

Let me say first of all that I am a proud Canadian. After working overseas and seeing how other people live, I felt like kissing the ground upon arrival back in Canada. We are lucky to be Canadian in many ways. But it could be even better! What is being "Canadian"? If we listen to the mouthpieces on Parliament Hill, it is being "not American". It is whatever the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission says we are, for it is they, in their infinite wisdom, who determine "Canadian content". Hence endless heart-warming tales about stuffy colonialists in nineteenth-century Prince Edward Island, played back-to-back, ad nauseum, on our taxpayer's television station, which nobody watches. It is the Canada Council, whose sages of the Arts determine the value of a sheet of Plywood with three stripes of color, as being "art". It is our Justice Department who says that teenage urchins can swarm old grannies on the street, or steal my car stereo, and be skipping school the next day, with nobody any the wiser. It is Revenue Canada, now conveniently (and no doubt wastefully) known as the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, who decides what constitutes a "spouse" for purposes of child support payments...while doing virtually nothing about all the creeps who don't pay a cent. They tax the heck out of the Ottawa Senators, then wonder why hockey teams go south. The same thing is true about young (and not-so-young) educated professionals, who, after starving as students, are slammed with high income taxes for succeeding. The CCRA's TV ad (in typical fashion) says that they are finding ways to "serve you better". Serve us with what? Siezure of assets? Then there's the Export Development Corporation...oh BOY, does this mean that if I can't sell my widget in Canada to someone, that Ottawa will subsidize its foisting upon unsuspecting Peruvians? In a word, yes. I need to see this in an advertisement? I guess so...I paid for it, and so did you.

Here's a question: if our government's social progams work so well, why do they need to advertise them on television? It seems a typically "Canadian" method to invest taxpayer's dollars advertising something that wastes money. Then they hire spies to harrass single mothers to see if they are eligible for subsidies.

Another question: If these comments about the state of our government agencies has even a grain of truth (and, I say, pompously, that it does) why do we let them get away with it? Better yet, how? Realize that we elected these fools, so does that make us fools too? Definitely not. Misguided, maybe. But not fools. Listening to people talk about politics in this country, there seems to be an alarming trend: Canadians are convinced at election time that the government is somehow charged with giving us things. The incumbents and hopefuls read the trend correctly, slathering promises and pavement on constituents, in order to gain their vote. Next Question: Who pays for the slathering? We do. So, we aren't being given anything, really. Check out the ads, after all. Case in point, the Liberal Minibudget before the last election. Want lower taxes? You got it! But notice that while this may be true about the income tax rate, with the other hand, they found more items to deem "taxable", actually raising taxes. The shiny trim was the carrot of tax reduction, while the rusty frame was the creeping cancer of deficit waste. And so, the Canadian standard of living creeps ever perilously towards the point of no return, while cronies get to golf under subsidy in Grand-Mere, Quebec. The low Canadian Dollar is the government's way of keeping us economic prisoner in our own country...it costs too much to go elsewhere...so why not advertise (with that big-brotherly, almost threatening tone 'a message from the government of Canada) vacations at Gros Morne or Green Gables? Add to it, of course, that folks suffering from seasonally-affected disorder, and thirsting for solar photons, have to mortgage their homes to visit Veradero.

So there. I have begun the process. With the guestbook, you can send your hate mail to me for being such a redneck. But if you do, I know it made you think. I think it's high time that there is yet another forum for dissent, separate from the Conrad Blacks and Canoe.coms of the country. I will be pontificating regularly from this page, and will be pasting the old comments into text files that you can download and disseminate. Even if nobody reads this, or cares what they read here, I won't be nearly as obsessed with the crap that occurs in our enormous frozen nation. Catharsis has its price...And being my own webmaster insures that no matter how controversial, or totally cockeyed, my point of view, it will be published.

June 9 2001 Comment on the Government Pay Raise...How they insult us and get paid to do it.

July 28 2000 A letter to the Minister of National Revenue...watch the 'dialogue' unfold. This page will eventually produce some hilarious reading, if it wasn't so sad.

November 2002 Amazingly, while surfing through Yahoo, I found my own tax court decision on the web. Now here is why I resent the government so much: they splatter my info, without my permission, all over the web! Thanks, you pompous shits. How much do you pay your web designer? Not only that, in both official languages.

February 2003 A collection of wonderous quotes, with comparisons to our political system...

This is just the beginning, much more will appear. So, enjoy it. If you have any thoughts at all, SAY SO.