HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2007-02-08, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2007. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Progressive Conservative leader John
Tory will be haunted by the voices of
two senior figures in his party in the
Ontario election in October and they are a lot
more substantial than ghosts.
Jim Flaherty, a former deputy premier and
finance minister and now the second most
important politician in the country as federal
finance minister, and Frank Klees, a former
Ontario transportation minister, were rivals for
leader in the race Tory won and both said he is
not ready to govern.
Their criticisms were recorded, as is almost
anything a candidate says in a leadership
campaign these days.
Ontario Liberals also have watched
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s
success in trashing new federal Liberal leader
Stephane Dion’s record as environment
minister by quoting a leadership rival’s now
famous comment “we didn’t get the job done.”
It would be wishful thinking in this era of
hard-nosed politics to believe the Ontario
Liberals will not remind of the criticisms of
Tory by his fellow-Conservatives, who they
will say know him best.
Strategists tend to pick up tactics in other
parties that ring a bell and the campaign Tory
won for leader also left around ammunition
that was easy to see.
Tory was front-runner in the 2004 contest,
and therefore the candidate to take potshots at.
Voters had been alienated by far-right policies
and looked more for centrist views he showed
as a backroom adviser to the moderate premier
William Davis and unsuccessful candidate for
Toronto mayor.
Flaherty and Klees argued strongly their
party should not risk choosing a leader who
had never been elected anywhere.
Klees said “The next leader must have
experience and a proven ability to win
elections. Now is not the time to choose a
candidate who has never won an election.”
Klees went further and pointed out Tory
“does not know what it is like sitting at a
cabinet table, having to make tough
decisions.”
It obviously would hurt Tory in an election if
two senior Conservatives were seen in
campaign ads warning he does not have
enough experience to govern.
Klees said the Conservatives need to reach
out to ethnic groups or they will never return
to power and “Ontario is a different place than
it was when John was in the premier’s office.”
This might prompt the Liberals to run ads
showing a senior Conservative worrying that
Tory is out of touch with the province of today.
Tory was born, lives and worked in Toronto.
Flaherty said his policies were “all about
Toronto,” which was inaccurate, but he said it.
Klees added “If you are not there (in
provincial politics), you don’t recognize there
is more to Ontario than Toronto. Every area
has to be given priority and not just the city of
Toronto.” He scoffed that Tory sounded more
like a Toronto mayor.
Many people feel Premier Dalton McGuinty
favours Toronto, but Tory would be
handicapped in criticizing him if he can trot
out ads in which two senior Conservatives
declare their leader favours the city.
Flaherty in the free-swinging campaign also
suggested Tory is really a Liberal and too
much like McGuinty. He and Klees accused
Tory of doing little to rebuild their party when
it was so reduced in numbers it could have
held its caucuses in a minivan between 1987-
95.
McGuinty’s Liberals do not stand to gain
much by claiming Tory is a Liberal or fair-
weather Conservative. But they can boost
themselves by showing he is not ready for the
top job.
The Conservatives have no examples of
McGuinty being downgraded by rivals in his
leadership race with which to retaliate,
because they never saw him as a threat and this
seemed justified when he ran only fourth on
the first ballot.
But parties are being made more aware
candidates who make tough criticisms of each
other in leadership races can burden those who
win and they may come under pressure to hold
their tongues.
Call me frustrated
Not to bum you out or anything, but
there’s some lowlife scumbag
wandering around shooting deer with
a crossbow.
Not ‘hunting’ them, you understand. Not
‘harvesting’ or ‘culling’ or any of those other
euphemisms we two-legged predators like to
employ – just shooting them and leaving them
to die.
Or whatever.
Police in Nanaimo, B.C. found three
limping deer with steel shafts still sticking out
of their bodies. They had to chase one for two
weeks before they finally subdued it with a
tranquilizer.
That deer was lucky – it got treated and
released. The other two died of their wounds.
A local spokesperson for a group that calls
itself the Traditional Bowhunters of
British Columbia has publicly deplored the
situation.
“This incident kind of gives hunters a bad
name,” he told a radio reporter. “It’s kind of a
black mark.”
No offense, mister spokesman, but any
organization that devotes its free time to
prowling through the bush firing 45-
centimetre steel bolts or wooden shafts with
razor-tipped points into grazing animals
minding their own business will never be
confused with the local chapter of The Sisters
of Mercy.
I know, I know…hunting is a hallowed
tradition and an honourable pastime, a visceral
link with our forebears yada, yada, etcetera
and so on.
Truth to tell, I have no complaint with
anyone who hunts to put food on the table.
And in fairness to bowhunters, the way they
hunt is a lot more sporting than the Suburban
Bubba – that weekend warrior with the
Remington Magnum and a 3x9 scope, who
parks his fat butt beside a two-four in a
tree blind and blows away his unsuspecting
quarry from a couple of hundred yards
away.
Unsporting enough. Our own Supreme
Court just made it worse.
That’s right. August members of The
Supreme Court of Canada, repository of the
finest legal minds in the country, have put
their venerable heads together, nodded
sagely as one, and decreed that it’s perfectly
legal for our native hunters to pitlamp
game.
You know pitlamping? It’s also called
jacklighting. That’s where the hunter shines a
bright searchlight into the eyes of his target in
the dead of night.
Works like a charm. The light immobilizes
the animal and makes him stand out from the
background. It’s perfect – easier than shooting
ducks in a barrel or fishing with hand grenades
even.
And our Supreme Court has just given it
their seal of approval.
Ah, well. I suppose the news will delight a
certain coterie of Great White Hunters near
Baie Comeau, Quebec.
You hear about these guys? Bunch of fat cat
nimrods – most of them millionaires – got
together at a hunting lodge on the shores of
Lac Matonipi to hunt moose last September.
Thing is, they didn’t want to – you know – get
all sweaty and cold trudging through the bush
and all.
So they hired a helicopter.
They would go out in the helicopter, one or
two at a time and fly around until they spotted
a moose. Then the chopper would land, drop
off the shooters and take off again. It would
relocate the moose and, by means of flying
low and buffeting the moose with gusts from
the blades, drive it back to the hunters.
What with the noise and the wind the moose
became so disoriented it probably didn’t even
see guys with the guns.
“The moose is practically hypnotized,” said
one observer. “It didn’t stand a chance.”
Probably just one drunken weekend
escapade, right?
Wrong. These disgusting jerks have been
using the same ‘hunting’technique for at least
the past three years.
A law-abiding hunter can spend up to a
week tracking a moose before he even gets a
shot at it. Last fall, these ‘sportsmen’killed 10
in three days.
The good news is: no more. Quebec wildlife
personnel got wind of it and sent agents into
the bush. They took photographs of the
operation – including pictures of the dead
moose being hauled out by helicopter.
Charges are pending against 18 members of
the North Shore shooting party – and the
company that supplied the helicopter (which
has been seized).
I hope they throw the book at them – and I
hope they do it by the book, so the charges
stick. These guys are rich and they’ll no doubt
appeal their convictions.
Lord knows if it gets to our Supreme Court,
they’ll probably be awarded The Order of
Canada.
Arthur
Black
Party fight will haunt Tory
Light is slowly beginning to dawn. I have
worked my way through the first few
minutes of my day, eyelids, like my
bedroom blinds, slowly rolling up to open.
I follow the everyday routine of ablution and
sustenance, with a smoothness that comes from
habit. Only because it’s a well-choreographed
routine that has been practised time and time
again can I prepare for my day with some
semblance of ease.
And then it happens. That sound. The irritant
of all irritants. The accessory to life that I
loathe to love as it is both a convenience and an
annoyance. My phone is ringing and at this
hour I know it can’t be good. I answer, all too
aware that my ritual is now broken and I will be
running late.
Two scenarios follow this story. The first is
that my greeting is met by dead air. The second
is that the computer works and I hear the
anonymous, always heavily-accented voice of
a telemarketer.
As you can well imagine, because you have
certainly walked in these shoes with me, I’m
truly ticked, both with this intrusion in my day
and with myself for having allowed it.
If this were an isolated incident it wouldn’t
be so bad. But we all know that’s not the case.
These calls seem to be happening with
increasing regularity. And as they obviously
want to catch someone home, the timing is
beyond bothersome.
Before 8 a.m., supper, evenings and
weekends we are inundated with calls telling
us that they have something we can’t live
without. Their credit card is better than the one
we’re using. They’ve got the plan that will
significantly lower our phone bill. People are
calling to clean the ducts, to install new
windows, to shampoo my carpets. Answer our
survey, give us a moment of your time, let us
make you an offer you can’t refuse.
Please, just make it go away. Unfortunately,
if there is an answer to ending this, I don’t
know it.
All I’ve ever come up with are ways to gain
a little satisfaction. Without being too rude, of
course; after all I like to think of myself as a
fairly good person. Which is unfortunately, I
might add, not always easy. Some of these
people can be really obnoxious. I hung up on
one of those once and he phoned me back and
hung up on me.
Generally I just opt for evasive telling them
that the person they are seeking isn’t home.
And, no I don’t see this as being untruthful as
the pronunciation of the name is usually so far
off the reality that I’m not sure who they’re
asking for anyway.
There have been occasions when I have
offered to go retrieve the person they wish to
speak to and after setting the phone down
continued on with my life. Once I returned 20
minutes later only to find the individual still
waiting at the other end of the line.
Others have their own methods. I know of a
person who, having been asked if they’d be
interested in... turned the tables and explained
that they too were in sales and would the caller
be interested in... They kept the pitch going
until the caller hung up.
But my favourite came from an episode of
Seinfeld. Jerry tells the caller that it’s a bad
time and asks for the person’s home number so
he can get back to him. “Why not?, You don’t
want me calling you at home? Well now you
know how I feel.”
Cute, and satisfying for the moment. But not
a solution. As we are only too well aware
another day, another bad time, another caller.
Other Views Leading a not-so-sporting life
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
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