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A little profit motive never hurt anyone, did it?

We could become the Monaco of the North
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I'm a glass half full kind of guy, unless the glass is very small and half full of very good scotch, in which case I start worrying whether I can top up my half empty glass. But half a glass of Major Harper's haven't-we-seen-this-nightmare-before policies is half a glass more than I want to gag down.

Well, suck it up, buttercup. Ontario did what Ontario has done so many times before - voted like sheep. The muttonheads delivered Pudge to the gates of Valhalla while their unwitting accomplices in Quebec sunk Iggy's leaky raft somewhere in the middle of the River of Styx.

"What the heck," said a half inebriated friend watching the doom come to light half a second after the polls closed in Lotusland, "How much damage can he do in four years."

The rest of the room, not having drunk so much, replied instantly, in unison, "George Bush!" He exited quickly to vomit.

Okay, so it's not that bad. Let's be honest. While Harpo seems like a war-mongering, deficit-loving, prison-building, earth-raping, corporate-toadying kind of guy in our pinko commie eyes, south of the border even the progressive Democrats would think he was way too socialist to get elected in the Home 'o' the Brave.

Yes, he's going to squander obscene amounts of dollars to build new prisons and get tough on imaginary crime to pander to his base, people who watch too much local if-it-bleeds-it-leads news on their televisions and think the criminals are running loose in the streets of their neighbourhoods, invading homes, bludgeoning folks like themselves or spraying local schoolyards with machinegun fire. No amount of empirical data showing there's less crime now than there was back in the day are going to convince those folks - and some of his cabinet ministers - things weren't better and more peaceful in the good old days when everyone was white and hetero.

And yes, he'll continue to aid and abet the real criminals, like his brethren south of the border. You know the desperados, the ones in suits and ties, packin' briefcases instead of heat. Just as surely as if they wore masks and brandished guns, they'll manage to continue the inexorable transfer of wealth from us to them, siphoned off through the tax code, corporate welfare schemes, voodoo economics and ponzi schemes while they tell us muttonheads we'll all be better off when the loose change trickles down and we can grub in the dirt for it. Note to self: buy more bank and energy stock if there's anything left after paying taxes.

And I believe Harpo when he says he'll be there for health care. He's committed to continuing funding the overburdened, limping system of hope-and-wait care. But being a firm believer in the power of markets to do no wrong and a champion of free enterprise, what harm can there be in exploring increased private health care? Heck, a little profit motive never hurt anyone, did it? What's the worst that could happen? Shorter wait times for those who can afford to jump the queue? Look on the bright side; it'll make wait times for the rest of us shorter... unless more docs decide to become entrepreneurs, in which case.... Hmmm, I wonder.

Doesn't matter though, half a glass is what we're stuck with. Barring an upstart Speaker, there'll be no need to prorogue Parliament this time around. No embarrassing questions. No uncomfortable coalition coming together to probe whether Harpo's government really facilitated torture or other unseemly matters. No need to debate the more-guns-less-butter, wide-eyed desire of an unpopular kid who loves the idea of spending billions - and really, what does it matter how many billions now that there's no realistic opposition - on shiny, fast, well-armed fighter jets.

Heck, it's only four years; what's the worst that could happen? Oops, I forgot.

But realistically, it ain't four years. In three-and-a-half years, after starving Quebec of the special treatment and fat contracts Ottawa usually throws its way, after showing them how wrongheaded it was to hitch their orange wagon to Diamond Jack, I suspect Harpo will turn the taps back on, just a little, while suggesting more of that sweet smack will flow when the new federalists come to their senses and vote for the new natural ruling party. And being the funding junkies they are, I suspect it'll work.

Ontarians are already a lost cause. With the memory of what life was like under Bob Rae's NDP government, I'm surprised they managed to elect even 22 NDP MPs. It'll take generations or a major scandal to change the direction of that ship. Isn't that why we all left? Well, that and the skiing here?

No, I'm afraid this is the new reality, Canada. The Liberal party will search their souls, wonder whether Justin Trudeau is mature enough to lead them, wonder if he'll consider a name change to help them ever slip him past Alberta, wonder, wonder, wander, lost in the wilderness of philosophical drift, unable to find a leader with enough charisma to spark the dying embers of liberalism in the Great White North.

Like the right a generation ago, the Liberals and NDP will continue to split the centre and left-of-centre vote until they're tired enough of being a political afterthought they find a way to come together as a united party. The uneasy marriage of statistics and social science point inexorably to the reality that a polarized nation can only support two political parties.

Unless... unless the perennial soul-searching debate on scrapping the first-past-the-post system and replacing it with some form of proportional representation finally takes root. But don't hold your breath. Proportional representation is only attractive to, well, losers. The 60.38 per cent of the people who voted for someone other than a Conservative candidate love the idea. Alas, their elected representatives hold only 45 per cent of the votes.

Sadly, the only chance PR has of passing happens when the combined strength of the losers is enough to carry the day, which is to say, in a minority government where enough of the opposition parties agree to, well, coalesce and change the world. It all seems frighteningly circular, eh?

I'm wondering how this might play into my Campagne de Fous. Suppose Whistler was to succeed where Quebec failed and become the first to secede from Canada. Hey, let's be honest, not much that happens in Ottawa really reflects our reality. We could become the Monaco of the North, a friendly, hedonistic, peaceful little country, no bigger than a postage stamp, where people come to have fun and escape the bigger, uglier reality of the rest of the world.

I like that image.