I
am ready, aye ready, to serve Canada
(and help myself)
by
Robert LaFrance
Note to Prime Minister Stephen
Harper: It has been a while since a Senate seat has come open in this area, but
I just want you to know that I stand ready to serve my country when I get the
phone call. Indeed, I am also watching my email, telephone answering machine,
carrier pigeon roost, and group mailbox for word that I have been elevated, or
at least my bank account has been elevated, to the Senate.
The Senate of Canada has 102 seats,
some of them filled with bums** at least part of the time. We don’t want to ask
too much of older folks, like Sen. Denise Batters of Saskatchewan. She’s 42.
Two Quebec senators, Claude Carignan and Leo Housakos, are 48 years old and 45
years old, respectively. Prime Minister Harper has given these people lifetime
pensions of (base salary) $133,000 a year plus all the perks, for thirty or
more years.
Don’t get me wrong; I love the whole
idea, but I want to get in on the gravy. Please don’t think I am some kind of
tree-hugging, green sprouting do-good-nik, because I’m not. I just want to get
up in the morning every Friday morning, go down to my (electronic) mailbox, and find a
deposit there in the area of $3000.
NOTE: As a senator, I would be obliged to appear in the Senate 76 times each session.
Mr. Harper recently appointed five
more Senators, whose list of names I notice did not include mine. One of them
was actually elected by Albertans, so that was democratic. Yeah. He’s Doug
Black, now Senator Doug Black. He was especially noted in the media because,
during his previous job with the University of Calgary, he broke several
expense account records. He spent more than $28,000 between
February 2011 and August 2012 whereas the previous guy in his job, Jack
Perraton, claimed a total of $434 expenses in three and a half years. Senator
Black is the fox that we Canadian taxpayers just let loose in the henhouse.
****************************
Another
person in the public eye lately has been New Brunswick’s Health Minister Ted
Flemming, who just might be described as a loose cannon. His opinion of those
against ‘fracking’ to get natural gas is that they are ‘hillbillies’ who are
looking at the world from their shacks.
Also,
he spent several weeks giving the impression that our doctors are quadruple
billing, kicking dogs, and are just generally there ripping off the system. He
was going to root out all these crooks. Then reality struck and the cannon had
to be once more secured to the deck. It turned out that a tiny percentage of
doctors overbilled the Medicare system, and most of that was because of errors.
Another
statement of his I found particularly amusing was his assertion that if the
province closed 7 out of 22 emergency rooms, patient care would be ‘virtually
unchanged’. Although he did not mention Goldilocks and the Three Bears, I
wondered if that were going to be his next story. This
is clearly a man who lives in or near a city, has a family doctor, and does not
plan to slip on the ice while visiting Riley Brook.
I am wondering if it may
not be a good idea to bring a busload of these government ministers,
bureaucrats, and city editorial writers to northern Victoria County. They would
be given downhill skis and airlifted to the top of Mount Carleton. Perhaps a
few hours later these people might find that we who don’t live in the shadow of
a city hospital might possibly need medical care just as much as those who do.
********************************
Although
I didn’t intend it this way, it has turned out that this week’s column is all
about governments and their peccadilloes. (I thought for a long time that a
peccadillo was a lizard, and maybe it is.)
This
last topic is about the proposed new provincial ridings. A lot of people are
upset about their new ridings which pay much more attention to numbers than to
the language spoken in a certain area. The Tory government, with the connivance
of the Liberals, hired a commission to redraw the province’s boundaries and
lower the number of ridings from 55 to 49. The new riding here, where I live,
is going to be called Carleton-Victoria and will go from Centreville to
(roughly) Saskatoon. You might say it is a Titanic riding, as we think back to
1912.
North
of us will be Victoria-la-Vallée, which will include Grand Falls, St. Leonard,
St. André, Drummond, and other strongly Francophone areas like Four Falls,
Medford, and New Denmark. A note though: Although the area Nictau is listed as
belonging to the riding of Victoria-la-Vallée, the people of Nictau will vote
in Carleton-Victoria. MLA Wes McLean straightened me out on that.
We
must keep in mind that this is a PROPOSAL. When my (future) wife proposed to me
in 1982, and begged and pleaded I might add, that was merely a proposal. Get my
drift? How I’ve suffered.
-end-
No comments:
Post a Comment