Cracks in the Road to a Harper Majority

Conservatives make poor public policy makers because they simply don’t believe in public policy.  Even Stephen Harper has gone on record saying that he doesn’t believe in taxes which would, of course, eliminate any funding for government.

We’re seeing how poor the Conservatives are with real genuine ‘what’s in the public interest’ public policy as we witness the rollout of the vaccination for the Swine Flu, or H1N1 virus.

Even this situation has been turned into political gamesmanship and it must end before Canadian lives are put at stake.

While Canadians have been whipped into a state of panic, the Conservatives are still spending buckets of our cash in their own ridings on roads, pipes and a few other tawdry infrastructure projects, all the while sending us ’10-percenters’ from Jay Hill who are too obsessed with Michael Ignatieff living out of Canada than creating a real action plan to protect Canadians.

ASIDE:  As a brief reminder, all of these projects are funded by ALL levels of government.  Taking full credit for this activity is akin to taking credit for a functional minority government.  Oops.  They’re doing that too.

Anyways, with the H1N1 virus, Canadians were promised that there would be enough vaccine to inoculate 100% of the population, if they wanted it.

When Dr. Sheila Bennett accused the Conservatives of playing games with this situation, the Liberals ultimately backed down and were ridiculed in the House of Commons.  RIDICULED!

Now, yesterday, we heard from the Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health that the rollout of the vaccine for the general population has been suspended.

By the time it does arrive, there will be no point taking it (assuming you still want it).

The flu season will be over.

I can’t help thinking there’s something very suspicious in all of this.  Why is it that we were promised one thing and we can’t deliver according to the demand?  Is Ontario getting hit the hardest?

Why are only TWO clinics open in the city of Toronto?  Why hasn’t the Rogers Centre been converted into a giant distribution centre for people that want the vaccination?

Why is the whole country not better prepared for this situation when we knew it would be a situation 6 months ago?  Where’s the ‘Pandemic Action Plan’?

The answer is simple:  Our leader and his supporters are incapable of doing things that are genuinely good for the public.  Worse off, it looks like they’re starting to play the ‘Teflon’ game by transferring all blame as issues deepen to provincial leaders (which is, admittedly, the jurisdiction of health in Canada).  This will prove to be the same disaster for Ontario Liberals as the HST has been.

I’m optimistic though.  This situation has exposed the cracks that exist in the road to a Conservative majority.  With any luck, they will turn into potholes and the Canadian public will finally understand that they need policy managers and not political mandarins running their government.

PS:  This review by the CBC is a great resource for people who have questions about the vaccination.  If you read the comments, you’ll see that most people will not get vaccinated, including me.  So … feel free to take our place in line!