Why I Can't Vote

Now that Paul Martin is on his way towards Canadian Kingship with a preliminary delegate vote that gives Sheila Copps about as much hope of survival as a Fudgesicle on a Haitian beach, it's time to consider the leaders for whom you and I will have to justify making a trip beyond the front porch to cast a ballot come next spring.

Barring a miracle, they are as follows: Paul Martin, Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, Peter MacKay, and some guy from Québec...sorry, Gilles Duceppe (assuming the Bloc lasts that long).

Yes really.

Mr. Martin we all know: that happy guy with the political pedigree that Bay Street, Wall Street, and the White House are all but drooling over. He's the man credited with eliminating the deficit during the high-flying nineties, getting Canada's books in order, and being a shameless opportunist wasting public time and money playing a rutting round of "who's the Bull Moose" with that little stag from Shawinigan.

Stephen Harper is the man that we've just met, yet wonder when he might drink his tea and head home. He's concerned about whether our sons and daughters might get confused at the altar and marry...well, the wrong sons and daughters. He's of a mind to be fiscally responsible, yet then so is King Paul. He's as socially well-rounded as a Phillips screwdriver, and as culturally understanding as Genghis Khan on a trip to Persia. When it comes to singing about "This Land is Your Land," Stephen gets stuck somewhere between "the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling."

Then there's Jack Layton, who is energetic, handsome, and downright entertaining, but as fiscally responsible as a speed-crazed slot machine junkie with a fist full of quarters and a pocket full of credit cards. He'd have more success using his charisma hitting the motivational speaking circuit.

Peter MacKay, known mostly outside of his home province for making crooked insider deals with a shifty, prairie outcast, and being "that guy" who replaced Joe Clark, is a doomed man; the poor boy from New Glasgow has a better chance of resurrecting the ghost of MacDonald than the party he founded.

Monsieur Duceppe represents the Bloc Québécois, and I live in Ontario.

I can't vote for these people.

There is a reason why Jean Chrétien, a three-term Prime Minister with little more to pat himself on the back for than being around at the right time when the economy was good, and when Québec finally got sick of separatist theatrics, is a three-term Prime Minister. On a national scale, there has been no one to vote for, and while this is old news, it doesn't look like there is going to be anything but the status quo for some time to come.

The King is dead! All hail the King!

The last two real leaders that this country had, love them or hate them (and I have never met anyone that didn't feel one way or the other about either of them), were Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Martin Brian Mulroney. Yet, after the National Energy Program, the Charlottetown Accord, the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution and the Free Trade Pact with the United States, the Canadian consciousness could take no more, went pop, and along came a life-long bureaucrat to fill the vacuum.

But those heady days of political change are looking better all the time.

Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not looking for some sort of "Thrilla in Muskoka" between Ben and Justin, or "Rumble in Jasper" with Ben and Sasha. If nothing else, Ben is bigger and could probably beat the tar out of both of them. And while there has actually been such silly talk, the fact is that these boys are a long way from being their fathers, and a round with Pierre and Brian was more than enough for one country and a pack of historians to digest for the next fifty years.

But someone like them would be very refreshing.

If conservatives, both big and small, could get their act together and organize a better alternative than Andy and Opie to lead them, do more than attack fringe issues because they know they don't have a hope in Sheila Copp's campaign office of tackling national ones with any success, perhaps look up the words "compromise," "nation" and "unity," put them all together, and spell the word "federal," they just might end up forming the next government of Canada.

Because somehow I doubt I'm the only one who's pissed at having Paul Martin dumped in my lap like an unwanted carp, and I'd suggest we'd actually have seen a true race for the Liberal leadership if there was more than a pilot light burning in this country's political furnace.