The Written Word: Rafe Mair March 21st

By Rafe Mair

Wow! Now here’s a surprise for you! The Finance Minister for Canada, Jim Flaherty, loses British Columbia geographically and fiscally. I don’t want to seem petty about Canada starting at the majestic Rocky Mountains except that this sort of speech goes through so many hands before it’s delivered it’s hard to imagine this was an accident.

The showering of loot on Quebec was predictable.  It seems that many people forgot three things – Quebec always gets special treatment, there is a Quebec election going on and there is a federal election in the offing.

The Separatists are not in tatters but they are in trouble. In fact they must be by definition because their overarching raison d’etre is separatism so they most always be on about that while the Quebecker’s mood changes making his interest cyclical. This is one of the down moods for separatism and the Parti Quebecois are in tough in the current election. But the Bloc Quebecois faces the same problem at the federal level. Whereas before last year’s election the Bloc looked pretty good – they didn’t wind up being as good as they looked – this time they face an almost viable Tory option in Quebec.

Budgets are always about elections and this one’s no exception. Prime Minister Harper has done a masterful job in pushing back both the PQ and the BQ and so what if British Columbia gets screwed in the Equalization formula and loses most of its land mass and all of its ocean.

Elections are in the air and they, of course, come first to those who want to win them.  

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