Tomorrow, (Mar. 13, 2008) on the floor of the nation's Parliament, the parties representing the popular will of the land will vote on the government's motion to extend 'The Mission' of Canada's armed forces, fighting on in southern Afghanistan through the year 2011.
- "Of course Canadians are Canadians; just like Americans are Americans!" they'd say.
What being second banana,
Numero dos, really means doesn't occur to they, Number One,
U.-S.-A.!!! But it's a bitter fact: For all our northern bravado,
we've always been a rump nation, first of Great Britain, now the United
States, foremost and ever, lairded over by a wafer thin homegrown elite, the
inheritors of a colonialism that never died.
The sons and daughters of
privilege in this country have survived atop the frosty pyramid of
Canada's power elite by following one guiding principle: Adaptation.
Tomorrow's vote in the House is more about a choosing up in the face
of an election pending only a single failed government motion, and a finding of equilibrium.
It's pictured best perhaps as a gathering of rats upon a burning
forecastle readying for a stampede, jockeying now for the best line to
reach the safety of the pier. Tomorrow's vote in Parliament is about
who will be the new masters of the Whitehouse, and how best to
position oneself to serve.
Today, the prime minister exudes
a smirking confidence, daring the Liberals to bring it on
and try overturn just one of a series of nation-changing Bills already
enacted, triggering an election.
So far the Liberals have played
possum, no-shows for the most part, poking their heads up every now and
then to take pot shots at more trivial Harper failures, and the missteps of
his ethically-challenged coterie, to little effect.
One of the Bills
allowed recently to pass adopts U.S.-style law and order reforms that
initiate odious 'mandatory minimum sentencing,' (a complete disaster
for the hundreds of thousands inmate-Americans and the taxpayers
burdened with the bill for private, for-profit prisons) highlighting a generally
hard-line approach to social management foreign for decades in liberal
Canada.
The next vote, failing opposition challenge, will see billions upon billions
more devoted for years more to the occupation of Afghanistan, and a
quiet continuance of the smaller garrison patrol in 'Insurgent Haiti.'
More importantly, if passed it will confer on the nation the dedication
to a corporate military state for at least the next generation.
The
bipartisan agreement between the controlling parties of the House of
Commons for several decades on foreign policy, already a mirror image
of the climate in Washington through all its vagaries, will remain despite
the occupants of 1600 Penn. Ave. because the consensus among the
similarly veneer-like elite in America is agreed: War is good for
business.
So war it will be.
Canadians: You can still send e:mails, etc. to members... it's quite likely your last chance.
This is it folks; we've reached the penultimate day of a one hundred and forty-one year experiment in northern sovereignty, otherwise known as Canada. 
