Now that the unholy trifecta of Clark' premiership, Dix's leadership and the Harper Majority has come to pass, what do we have to look forward to?
What is scary is that the Conservative majority has ALREADY moved the goalposts of Canadian politics. The best example of this in B.C. was CBC's election wrap on TV last night (May 2). There was NDP President Moe Sihota, with undisguised acceptance and at least semi-admiration, pointing out the remarkable framing of Ignatieff and the tremendous effectiveness of hitherto unprecedented "between election" attack ads.
Sihota opined that all parties, including his own, would be doing more of this "between-election" advertising in the future. (If nothing else, Moe is a good barometer of what reflexive politicians are thinking.)
This is exactly what I was afraid of: the political lesson-learning that would happen as a result of Tory success built upon abuse of Parliament and American style character assassination.
In addition, the prime minister has already tipped his hand on health care. When asked this morning about whether he was contemplating allowing privatized delivery , he avoided the question by affirming his support for public health insurance. In other words, he didn't deny it. It reminded me of 2006, when every time the subject of global warming was raised, he would talk about all the good things that he was doing about smog.
I'll have more to say about private delivery options soon; in the meantime here is what I wrote a few years ago; it is a kind of mini-primer on the issue: http://markcrawford.blogspot.com/2008/08/between-romanow-and-kirby-and-beyond.html
Also, for anyone interested here is the mp3 file of my commentary upon the election for the radio station CFIS FM on May 2.
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