Posted on 08/20/2005 12:59:37 AM PDT by goldstategop
The prime minister of Canada had to reassure his nation this week that the woman he has chosen to act as the pinnacle symbol of Canadian unity does not in fact favor breaking up the country.
Whether she had at one time espoused this, he did not say. He could nevertheless unreservedly declare to Canadians that now that she has been offered the job of governor general of Canada (with a household and travel budget that runs around $20 million a year) she finds herself – in her own words – "proud to be Canadian" with "the greatest respect for the institutions of our country."
If Americans find the above too absurd to be believable, that's because they do not understand their neighbor to the north. Up here, the citizenry have long learned not to doubt reports on the doings of their government at Ottawa on the mere grounds that they're preposterous. And every time they assume that their government has reached the lowest possible pit of asininity, they shortly discover they were wrong. This latest extravaganza, however, will be difficult to outperform.
It has to do with an office for which there has been no equivalent in America since colonial days. The colonies were administered by governors sent from England. So too was Canada after it became a British colony in 1763. After the Revolutionary War, however, the office of state governor in the U.S. became elective. But Britain continued to appoint Canadian governors. Even as by stages it made Canada self-governing, a "governor general," as he came to be called, was sent out from Britain to sustain the surviving, if ever more tenuous, connection to the British Crown.
From 1952 onward, however, the office went to a Canadian, and since 1967 the Canadian prime minister chooses the appointee. This individual continues to represent the person and office of the British Monarch, thus embodying the sovereignty of the country. The appointee must therefore be pre-eminently non-political both in fact and in public image.
That last necessity imposes a serious strain on the always shaky integrity of Liberal prime ministers, for whom pretty well everything is political. Four of the last five governors general, for instance, all rose to prominence through government-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, leaving the impression that the CBC is the only place left where reliably genuine Canadians can be found.
The candidate must also incarnate the Liberal vision of the New Canada by representing the multi-cultural. Hence the current incumbent, CBC hostess Adrienne Clarkson, was born in China. Her successor, announced this month by Prime Minister Paul Martin, is CBC hostess Michaelle Jean, who was born in Haiti and is married to France-born film producer Jean-Daniel Lafond.
In total, therefore, Ms. Jean has superb Liberal qualifications. She is not Canadian-born. She's part of Montreal's smart-set intellectual community, where support for the Liberals has been dolefully low. And she represents a province where the separatist Bloc Quebecois has gravely eroded Liberal support in the last five general elections. She's the perfect candidate.
Well, not quite perfect. Soon after the appointment was announced, a publication that favors Quebec's exodus from Canada began running stories about the new representative of the Queen. She had been an enthusiastic Quebec separatist, they said. Her husband had made films favoring the separatist cause. He was in fact a crony of the gang that in 1970 strangled to death a Quebec Cabinet minister.
The denials and denunciations from the prime minister's office were prompt and vitriolic. Ms. Jean had been thoroughly checked out. So had her husband. They were being savaged by nasty people intent only on embarrassing the government. There was no evidence to back up any of these charges.
Again, the government had fallen into a trap. There was indeed evidence, namely Lafond's films. In one, his wife is shown making a toast to Quebec independence. In a book on the making of that film, her husband identifies Quebec as a victim of "the transnational technocratic Mafia." He concludes: "A sovereign Quebec? An independent Quebec? Yes, I applaud with both hands."
Last Saturday, the prime minister's office issued Martin's assurances of his appointee's unfailing loyalty. However, in a public statement issued Wednesday and intended to clear her name, Her Excellency-to-be denied none of the evidence against her, leaving no doubt whatever where her sympathies once lay.
But they've changed, of course. She's come to appreciate what Canada truly means – a magnificent country, and an even more magnificent expense budget.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Maybe some "Red-state" Canadian provinces could be persuaded to join "Jesus-Land". Might make for badly "gerrymandered" national maps ("Jesus-Land"/USA and "Liberalia"/Canada).
Australia's current Governor General is a retired SAS Major General.
I really pity my Canadian friends for having to put up with everything that goes on up there.
As a Canadian ex pat., I can say that I saw this and a lot more coming in 1981 when I left Canada for good. It is not a free country and the government, such as it is, is hardly representative of the majority of Canadians, who remain irreverently English.
Canada historically was governed by a "Family Compact" and that is also true today, for one can only be successful in Canadian Politics if one has the right pedigree. Political ideology and one's past matter hardly at all as you can see from the appointment of one who has supported treasonous activity in Canada. Such traitors are now lauded and form the itelligentsia of what has become a Socialist Country. The federal government controls the news. In Quebec over 50% of the jobs are funded directly or indirectly by the federal government through government civil service, federal agencies and Crown Corporations.
There are prohibitive national firearm laws requiring one to periodically prove one's sanity through medical certificates. Canada is a country whose people labor under
a regime of despots who are socialist mavins. The ordinary people are regarded as essentially ignorant masses who must suffer a continuous , "let them eat cake" attitude.
So will the USA be the same, if we allow liberal wing nuts
regain control of the government of the United Sates of America. That future is what will be contested over the next 2 or 3 election cycles here in the USA.
With all due respect to Ms. Jean -- whose appointment as Canada's next Governor General has been greeted by a gushing Liberal Senator David Smith as a "statement about what Canada is all about" since we are "the most multi-cultural country in the world" -- the Prime Minister's choice must have come as a severe disappointment to Ms. Parrish, whose anti-American qualifications for the job certainly appear to be even more remarkable than those of Ms. Jean.
Perhaps we should recall host Michaelle Jean's presentation of The World According to George Bush on the CBC's liberal propaganda feature The Passionate Eye as part of a series of Bush-bashing CBC documentaries during the run up to the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
At the time, Ms. Jean's presentation was prominently advertised by the CBC as: "A two-hour documentary about the inner-workings of the Bush administration that will alarm even the most hardened Washington-watchers. Fans and critics of the acclaimed Fahrenheit 9/11 will want to see this thoughtful and damning investigation of the U.S. administration ... aimed to show how the Bushes, father and son, have not only dined with the devil, but have often invited themselves to his table."
Much to the relief of all Canadians, Rideau Hall will now continue to be occupied by someone who'll ably reflect the spirit of the CBC motto and put Canada/U.S. relations on a "solid" footing: "Trusted, Connected, Canadian!"
E.W. Bopp, Tsawwassen, BC.
Do Liberals actually believe in a god?
It gets more interesting when put to a county level...you'd find Red Counties all over the place (including many in Ontario and Atlantic Canada) and the "Urban Archipelago" would be maintained...
Social liberals? No.
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