That was then and this is now

I was thinking this morning about what Canada was like on November 20, 2005.
Paul Martin was Prime Minister. He had negotiated a national day-care program and the Kelowna Accord. With 12 straight years in power, the federal Liberals had implemented progressive legislation like gay marriage and banning corporate political donations, progressive programs like the Court Challenges program and financial support for Gay Pride parades. It looked like we might decriminalize marijuana. Canada supported the Kyoto protocol. We had a firearms registry. We had the Canadian Wheat Board.

Gone, all gone. And we keep on going backwards. Next on the Harper Cons chopping block, I expect, will be the Canada Pension Plan. They'd dismantle Medicare if they could.

This is what we've lost:

“For [Stephen] Harper, a national daycare plan bordered on being a socialist scheme, a phrase he had once used to describe the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. For [Paul] Martin, whose plan would have transferred to the provinces $5 billion over five years, the national program was what Canadianism was all about. "Think about it this way," [Martin] said. "What if, decades ago, Tommy Douglas and my father and Lester Pearson had considered the idea of medicare and then said, 'Forget it! Let's just give people twenty-five dollars a week.' You want a fundamental difference between Mr. Harper and myself? Well, this is it.”

Please God, give Canada another progressive government and we promise not to piss it away this time.