There's a reason we are taught to never make a promise we aren't prepared to keep: you will be considered untrustworthy, or worse, deceptive, breaking one's word with malice aforethought if you are swift to make promises and then fail to keep them.
The CPC rode the Trust horse for all it was worth in the last federal election, consistently highlighting the litany of broken promises made by successive Liberal governments and shattering their oft-touted image as the party that can be trusted by Canadians. Their campaign of truth and returning integrity to Parliament worked; Canadians gave the CPC a minority government.
The CPC has behaved fairly well on the trust front overall one could argue, but this past week the details surrounding the Bill Casey affair and the Atlantic Accord negotiations between the current government and the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, which informed Casey's decision, have given reason to doubt the CPC are any more trustworthy than their predecessors, at least when it comes to their spoken and written word. Cracks in the integrity wall are now appearing.
No, to our knowledge, the CPC isn't engaging in widespread cronyism or covering up a pervasive "AdScam" scheme that funnels public dollars into the party friendly hands and pockets. Brown envelopes stogged with sweet tax dollars gleaned out of the pockets of Canadian workers are not being left on dinner tables belonging to government clientele.
Yet Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams says he has a signed agreement from Prime Minister Harper that the government under the CPC would exclude resource revenues from all new equalization formulas.
Shouldn't Mr. Harper honour his promise?
The Honourable Peter MacKay previously stood in the House and said that CPC caucus members do not need to fear expulsion if they vote with conscience on the Budget. Nobody corrected him, not even the Prime Minister. One assumes, then, that his word is true, as good as a signed document.
Should Bill Casey then not be expelled?
On this single story we have two glaring examples of broken promises and flip-flopping on commitments, the very things the CPC told Canadians would end if they ousted the Liberals and put the CPC in the driver's seat. Refusal to keep their written and spoken word has cast their integrity into question.
5 comments:
Did you really think that they wouldn't break their promises? If nothing else this should bring home to the Canadian people the simple truth that parties and politicians say one thing from Opposition and on the election trail, and do quite another if they succeed in forming a government.
Actually, yes, I did believe they would be true to their word. I went so far as to take out party membership and over the past two and a half years have doled out not insignificant sums of money to further (what I thought might be) a return to fiscal and social conservatism. I quite disappointed at the disconnect between words and governance with the CPC.
Inconsistent is the word that springs to mind. In some areas, like actual support for the military, the government has been remarkable. But in other areas, such as the budget, they've basically behaved as liberal Liberals. And now they're flip-flopping on conscience votes?
I am taken aback.
So now you know, it doesn't matter what the party colours are, or what they say - political promises are a dime a dozen, and not worth quite that much on the open market.
I have a Liberal friend, a paid up party member, attends conventions, votes Liberal in every election, decries the Liberal corruption of the past, says that things will be different next time around, and doesn't believe me when I tell him that nothing will change even if the big winds come from empty caves party is returned to power after the next election - he's ripe for disappointment as well.
There is an up-side to all of this, as soon as enough people become disillusioned enough to simply opt out of a corrupt system designed to place the party above all else we might see change.
We might indeed, stageleft. Of course, I keep hoping for a day when a political party actually does in power what it says it will do beforehand. Honesty, integrity, fortitude. Are they too much to ask?
Individual party members may well have honesty and integrity, and they may even want to keep the promises they made to their constituents - but as long as people are willing to promote and participate in a system that requires that an MP's first loyalty to be to the party and not the electorate there will be no change.
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