Six years after the Harper Cons moved into government and they still don't seem to realize that governments are judged not on what they say but on what they do.
Apparently there's going to be a Conservative rally in Quebec this weekend and Harper is going to give a speech and so he has to figure out what he can talk about.
He's burned so many bridges in Quebec that he's been reduced to asking Brian Mulroney how the Cons can improve their image.
Mr. Mulroney still remains a respected political figure in the Quebec and probably knows it better than any current Conservative, while Mr. Harper can’t shake the stereotype of being a Western cowboy out of touch with la belle province.Do ya think maybe that's because he IS a Western cowboy out of touch with la belle province?
Does Harper think his winning personality and enormous personal charm (/snark) will convince Quebecers to just forget all about the insults that the Harper Cons keep dishing out?
Here's David Climenhaga's list just from last fall:
The peculiar decision in mid-August to bring back the “Royal” prefix to describe the Canadian Navy and Air Force. No one in English Canada cared much about this any more – it was a fight lost by another generation. Yet it remains a powerful symbol of an unequal past in Quebec. It would seem this was done in the wake of a royal visit to please a few grumpy old vets and an even smaller number of nutty members of the tiny Monarchist League of Canada.Don't the Harper Cons realize that Quebecers will remember these things?
The decision to cut Quebec shipyards out of a $33-billion naval shipbuilding program. Much was made by the government of the “non partisan” nature of the civil-service-run bidding process – an oddity in itself given the contempt with which these Conservatives normally hold “bureaucrats.” But what are programs to build largely unneeded strategic naval vessels but domestic-make work arrangements that benefit various regions of the country? This is, after all, at the heart of the American political-economic model our Conservatives so much admire.
The bizarre decision at the end of October push to appoint a unilingual Auditor General when fluency in both official languages was right there in the job description. The chosen one, Michael Ferguson, said he was recruited by a corporate headhunter and that he never bothered to read the job description – some auditor! This despite the fact that the understanding that key public-service jobs will be held by people fluent in both languages is part of the historic compromise that has (barely) held the country together.
The similarly inexplicable appointment in mid-October of the unilingual Ontario judge Michael Moldaver to the Supreme Court of Canada. Justice Moldaver has promised to learn to speak French, a nice gesture, but not very meaningful under the circumstances.
The double slap of the Conservative plan to destroy the national shotgun and rifle registry, which is popular for good reason in Quebec – where the hideous Dec. 6, 1989 massacre of 14 young women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique prompted the drive to register these weapons – and the Harperites’ adamant refusal to share the data collected and paid for by Quebec taxpayers as well as the rest of us.
They're pretty good at remembering.
