POST BY: PADDY JOHNSON

Edmund Haakonson, Slapshot

Tyler Green cast a throw-away line this morning, lauding the Canadian government for funding a nude bronze sculpture of a gay hockey player. “If that isn’t enough to make us all move to British Columbia, what is?” Green asks. It’s tacky as all hell, but I get the point: liberal minded funding should be applauded.

You won’t find any such praise for the Canadian government on this blog, and it’s because the country will be lucky to see any such funding a year from now if its leaders aren’t forced out of office. Prime Minister Steven Harper prorogued Parliament over the holidays (this means shutting it down for two months) in a transparent attempt to cool the media shit storm brewing over the alleged cover-up of Afghan detainee abuse.  This follows a long line of deprived actions while in government including force-able and clandestine attempts to slash arts funding, limiting media access to parliament, and failing to attend committee sessions investigating the torture cover-up scandal so, under house rules, the meeting could not convene.

Given these actions, I’m not particularly concerned about the qualifications of the opposition; I would just like to see Harper voted out of office. For the better part of my life I felt privileged to be Canadian, but thanks to Conservatives, these days, I’m usually just embarrassed.