On the Liberal Express and my non-interview with Michael Ignatieff.

In an effort to try and capitalize on a series of Tory gaffes Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff launched the Liberal Express this summer.

And there was a brief blip in the polls in mid-summer when the Liberals could claim a lead (within the margin of error).

Also, the Tories did manage to blow an 11-point lead in less than a week over the census non-issue that they turned into a disaster. So there is always a chance that come election time (likely not till the spring) that the Liberals could, if they get lucky, head to the polls just as the latest Tory stumble over their own feet unfolds.

If that was the case what sort of leader would Ignatieff be? We’ve heard the Tory attack ads but I was curious what the Harvard scholar, journalist, best selling novelist and Obama bff would be like up close and personal.

So it was with great anticipation of some significant face time with the Liberal leader that I boarded the Liberal Express bus for our trip down the Sea to Sky Corridor.

Unfortunately Iganatieff was only granting interviews to Postmedia (formally Canwest) and I had to spend the hour talking with Ken Dryden (yes not a bad consolation prize.) Just the same it would have been nice to get the promised interview. Of course those who know me, know I rarely, if ever let reality get in the way.

I therefore present the interview as I imagine how it would have gone if I had in fact interviewed Michael Ignatieff (as promised).

Me: You have been talking a lot about Tory tax cuts to big corporations, tax cuts that the middle class are largely bearing on their backs, so what would you do for the middle class if the Liberals form government?

Ignatieff: We will end the era of corporate welfare?

Me: So direct subsidies and selective tax breaks to large corporations will end?

Ignatieff: Not so much that. But we will preserve Canadian Corporate Champions that we all can be proud of.

Me: So basically more of the same?

Ignatieff: Not at all it will be a Liberal government taking your money to give to big corporations, which means we’ll do it in a kinder more compassionate way – the Canadian way - not the dog eat dog American way that Stephen Harper emulates.

Me: But the federal government gave $74 million to large media companies in Canada last year how does that improve the country?

Ignatieff: Oh well I can’t speak to every nickel and dime that’s being spent here and there. But if you have a problem with those companies take it up with them.

Me: But those are Canadian tax dollars, shouldn’t you be holding the Tories to account for wasteful spending?

Ignatieff: Did you know the Tories smeared a career public servant? And hey, how about that census mess?

Me: That hardly answers the question.

Ignatieff: Okay sure a company like Glacier Media that made $30 million in profit last year received a few million dollars from the federal government. But you know what? If we didn’t give them that money next year they might only make $25 million and then we wouldn’t have a proud Canadian Corporate Champion.

Me: I’d rather you didn’t give them the money. Couldn’t it have gone to arts groups? A fraction of that funding would have supported dozens of groups across the country. I thought you were in favour of that sort of spending?

Ignatieff: Okay here’s the deal, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I might talk a lot about the $17 billion the Tories are planning to spend on jet fighters but let’s face it if there’s a Democrat in the White House and he (or she) wants a big defense contract from Canada, well we’re going to give it to them.

Me: And arts groups?

Ignatieff: The thing about arts groups in Canada is…well it’s not London let me tell you. I mean that’s theatre, and then there’s the Tate Modern, plus there’s all of those great BBC programs. Did you know I used to work for the BBC, yes I was quite the celebrity back in London town in those days let me tell you. Why I remember the time Martin Amis and I were in Bloomsbury and…

Me: So you’re saying Canadian arts groups are undeserving of support because they don’t measure up to their better-funded colleagues in England and America? Isn’t that why so many talented Canadians end up in the U.S or the U.K?

Ignatieff: Hey I went to the U.K and the U.S and it did wonders for my career. Back when I was writing for the New York Times they used to call me a latter day Hildy Johnson and…

Me: So now that you want to lead Canada what are you going to do for Canadians? That is besides give our money to Canadian Corporate Champions just like the present government is doing?

Ignatieff: A thousand points of light.

Me: Excuse me?

Ignatieff: Sorry someone used that one already. Uh…oh yeah The Big Red Tent that’s what we offer, come into The Big Red Tent, there will be milk and cookies.

Me: That’s your policy, come into the big red tent?

Ignatieff: Don’t knock it, I’ve said that at 102 stops so far and it’s always a crowd pleaser. 

Me: But what does that even mean?

Ignatieff: We’ve got something for everyone, the left, the right, the Greens, the keen on Jesus crowd, the law and order crowd, the progressives (yeah I know we’re still trying to figure that one out, but really if you just say, ‘progressive, it seems to cover it.) 

Me: How can you possibly appease all those disparate groups?

Ignatieff: It’s a big tent. Oh, and it’s got a strong foundation.

Me: Still means nothing.

Ignatieff: Perhaps but we've discovered 90% of Canadians only care about how much money they'll keep after taxes and if their savings are secure, so that doesn't give us a lot of wedge issues.

Me: So you're going to campaign as Tory Lite, or possibly NDP Lite in Toronto?

Ignatieff: That's about the size of it.

Me: It is, you know, kind of cynical.

Iganatieff: It's that sort of world. It's a tough world, it's a rough and tumble world. Back when I was reporting from Afghanistan I saw how brutal it could be and that stays with you, let me tell you. Back then I was known as Kabul Iggy. I remember how all of us hardened war correspondents would gather around 6 pm for cocktails of bath tub gin and soviet vodka. A lot of times the others would change the location and forget to tell me but I always found them. They were always so happy to see me they could barely speak. Then we would share stories about our various experiences in country, that's how we would refer to it, in country. I told a lot of those stories because I've just got a knack for observation (I've written 17 bestsellers you know). At any rate they would listen attentively while I gave them my perspective on the war. Like this one time...  

Can evil be stopped?

So you think you can stop Gordon Campbell? Can you stop evil? Of course you can’t, not the really pure concentrated kind that we’re talking about here. But we stopped Hitler (I imagine some of you are saying, whilst the others are rolling your eyes going, oh not the Nazis again). Yes we did stop Hitler, but it took billions of dollars and cost millions of lives, so that option isn’t really available to us.

And to the eye rollers who are (again I imagine) asking why I have to keep bringing up the over the top Nazis comparisons and why I have to keep picking on poor little Gordon Campbell. Well I’ll tell you why because he’s financing the province out of deficit on the backs of small business and middle class families so he can give the five or six corporations who pay his bills a break.

Not Nazism by any stretch or even of nearly equitable evil, but still pretty darn loathsome.

And Campbell continues to add to his inherent loathsomeness by acting indignant whenever he is criticized for his economic policies. 

He proclaims loudly to anyone still listening (I do…purely for amusement) that his government has set the province’s finances back on track. That’s actually true to a certain extent and it was only because he broke with the NDP policy of bribing us with our own money. Campbell has pulled off the neat trick of taxing us and then bribing the handful of corporations headed by his country club pals with our money; which if you think about it is a fairly audacious maneuver for someone usually portrayed as blander than white bread.

But like any Ponzi scheme eventually the house of cards collapses, and those at the top abscond with the funds, while the vast majority are left wondering what happened.

Campbell likes to refer to his government as the free market alternative to the NDP, but they are not. Granting monopolies and duopolies to a privileged few is no more free market than Glen Clark’s policy of handing everything over to three or four powerful unions.

Not too mention Campbell’s pandemic of corruption seems to be spreading as municipal governments figure, ‘what the hell everyone else is doing it why shouldn’t we join the gravy train?’ ‘Junkets to China at taxpayer expense, sure why not, it’s not like they really need new roads or play ground equipment.’

It’s not like we need arts spending or youth programs, those damn kids have to grow up sooner or later and let’s face it the smart ones will figure out how to get on the gravy train. The rest of course will have to pay, and pay and pay – a carbon tax here, H.S.T there and whatever new tax the Liberals come up with between now and 2013 to squeeze the last few pennies out of the majority to finance the few.

The Liberals are baffled as to why more people have signed the petition against the H.S.T. than voted for them in almost 30 ridings. Here’s the simple answer (and it is simple) they hate you.

People have just had enough. And after the multi-billion dollar Olympics, where we saw Campbell grinning and waving his mittened paws from his luxury box like a five-year old boy hopped up on cookie dough, people are wondering why they are being asked to pay for the premiere’s showcase.

Well the answer here is simple too, because the Liberals can get away with it. After 10 years of NDP mismanagement they’ve been able to coast on lingering mistrust of the Dippers, and so they’ve been able to line their pockets and those of their corporate pals with impunity.

Eventually the music has to stop and someone should be caught out. But sadly I’m not so sure that’s Campbell’s fate. As unjust as it is, his corruption has paid off enough people in high places that he will likely be able to retire to a six figure consulting ‘job’ as is political career winds (slowly) to a halt.

Unfair and doubling insulting is that the rest of us will be paying for it in the tax breaks and subsidies granted to the aforementioned corporate friends of Campbell.

 

It's going to be that sort of decade.

It’s been one of those years, and since it’s a new decade as of January 1, we can (if we want to stretch it) say it’s been one of those decades.

What’s strange is most decades take a year or two (or longer) to get into their own groove, to establish their own identity so to speak. For instance the Nineties didn’t really feel like the Nineties until Grunge burst on the scene around 1992. The Aughts didn’t feel any different from the Nineties until 9/11. And the Sixties, well ask any Boomer, the Sixties began sometime in 1966 and ended with Watergate.

But the Teens have their own distinct feel right off the bat; this decade feels less hopeful. Or more realistic if you prefer; it’s the cynical decade, it’s the decade that stands over your shoulder and goes, ‘see, I told you so.’

Yes it’s promising to be one annoying decade; unless you are a cynic (yeah I know we all are to some degree, but some elevate it above a hobby to Life Path). If you are one of those people this could be your time to shine or to be shunned for embodying the times so perfectly and just generally being you old super annoying self.

Oh why do I despair so for the coming decade you ask? Well let’s look at the obvious answers first, two words – Gordon Campbell. Okay true he’ll either be turfed from office in 2013 or stabbed in the back 36 times sometime before that, but just the same, he could bring in a few more taxes in the interim.

As well he’ll be able to gut arts funding (yes there’s still more to gut) even more by the time we finally see the last of him (and counting the minutes till he’s gone isn’t much fun either.)

‘But he’s just added $10 million to arts funding,” I hear some of you say. And whoever you are you are idiots. He’s taken $10 million in existing arts funding and put it towards Spirit Festivals, these are corporate friendly arts ‘events’ designed to keep all of us thinking about the Olympics or as they put it, “reliving the Olympic experience.”  The experience that is through sanitized ‘family friendly’ arts events designed to make us feel good about, oh I don’t know, important things I suppose, like wireless service and text messaging.

True I did have fun during the Olympics, but that had much more to do with drinking and having sex with young German tourists (okay it was really just that one) going through their experimental phase than it did Olympic spirit.

So we’ve got that to look forward to and in the meantime there’s no arts funding available to go towards arts groups that might give us some relief from Goebbels’ propaganda push. Wait did I say Goebbels Sorry I didn’t mean to compare the premier to Hitler’s minister of public enlightenment, sometimes Campbell and Goebbels are easily misspelled.

‘The Nazis, you’re bringing out the Nazi comparisons?’ No doubt some of you are screaming, and if you are stop it, you’re scaring the children. Yes Nazi comparisons are by their very nature over the top, but hey sometimes you gotta get people’s attention.

‘Well what else have you got besides Campbell, because you’ve already flogged that one to death?’ That’s what the more sensible amongst you are asking by now (you see you’re cynical you embrace the age).  And you are right, we can’t lay everything at the premier’s feet. In the decade to come there will be others who are destined to become even more blame worthy (like I said it’s just going to be that sort of time).

In the meantime we have Marc Emory doing time in a US jail for offences that are basically legal in the state of California.

We have the BP oil spill.

We have Mel Gibson.

We have a show called ‘The Hills’ that people apparently watch for entertainment purposes.

And lest I forget we have the H.S.T, yay Teens!

‘Then what should we do, slit our wrists now and save ourselves 10 years of misery?’ Don’t be an idiot only young women getting over heartbreak and bad poets (Sylvia Plath didn’t slit her wrists) resort to such measures and the two are basically the same person anyway.

What to do? Do nothing, don’t worry, don’t panic, definitely drink more, if possible have more sex and whatever you do don’t forget your towel (thank you Douglas Adams). You can’t really do anything else other than make the best of a bad situation, lame perhaps but true. As someone once said, “if life gives you lemons, paint that shit GOLD!”

The unstoppable VanZalm machine

The unstoppable Vanderzalm machine is rolling through Vancouver this week and The Zalm is out to do some Zalmdamage to the Liberals and their despised H.S.T as his supporters grow and the Zalm grows ever closer to steamrolling over the corrupt Liberal regime in Victoria.

That’s how the press release should read if anyone cared to ask me but of course nobody did…fools.

Yes no one likes Campbell and everyone detests the H.S.T but the main thing here is that the person who started the province wide rally against both, former premier Bill Vanderzalm, should make the most out of his exciting last name.

He has a V and a Z in his surname, alone those are powerful sounding consonants but together – Vandamage!

Sigh, apparently no one else is as excited about hard consonants as I am, but they should be, because Vanderzalm, believe or not, is gathering significant support as people can’t help but flock to his no nonsense populism, especially when compared to the dual automatons Carole James and Gordon Campbell.

Campbell is currently 18 points down in the polls but by all accounts completely nonplussed by those numbers. Most mainstream media outlets put it down to his hubris based on three previous election victories, but those of us with an ear to the ground believe it is more likely a result of the premier’s growing Imbutain addiction.

So in the grasp of the rare South American pain killer/hallucinogenic Campbell is, according to some accounts, delusional and out of touch with reality. He has, so the rumour goes, taken to calling midnight cabinet/prayer meetings and has even flirted with the idea of changing his name to Amour De Cosmos (Lover of the Universe).

Oddly enough, or perhaps not, most people would be more likely to vote for Amour De Cosmos than Campbell, so his handlers should encourage the name change not dissuade him.

Well politics in B.C are interesting if nothing else, many of my Ontario friends, which is pretty much all of them (all two), always ask what makes B.C politics so wacky, so goofy, so completely out there and why do we vote for these people?

Yes there is a tone of superiority from my Upper Canada friends who have migrated to B.C, apparently so they can constantly remind us how much better things are in Ontario. They prefer the central Canada approach to politics, electing an unexpressive and unemotional premier who resembles a marble statue of all previous premiers (and in one case it actually was a statue, apparently they lost track), about once every 10 years, who does what all the rest have done and so on and so forth.

“It’s boring but at least it’s predictable,” they say. What’s so great about boring and predictable? I’m looking forward to the last days of the Campbell regime as the legions of VanZalmer supporters storm the Fuhrer Bunker underneath the legislature building, who knows what crazy last minute edicts Campbell will issue.

Of course that’s supposing his alleged Imbutain addiction won’t get the best of him before 2013 and there will still be a Campbell to kick around. You see that’s the problem, you never realize how much you miss someone until they’re gone. And when Campbell is banished from public life to quietly snort rails of Imbutain in between drinks on the cocktail circuit, we’ll miss him…yes we’ll miss ridiculing him, but there will never be a better and more deserving target of our ridicule, sigh, all good things do come to an end.

  

How I saved Burton Cummings life

So Burton Cummings was in town this past weekend, and, yeah, I admit it he was here to see me. But why, why, oh why would one of Canada’s greatest musicians, second probably only to Ann Murray, come to Squamish to see you? I imagine some of the less credulous among you are asking. Well let me tell you why, my skeptical friends: I don’t generally like to blow my own horn, but I once saved Burton Cummings’ life.

It was the summer of ’01 and Burton was in Vancouver commiserating with Randy Bachman over the latest Guess Who comeback-tour debacle (people had been expecting Lenny Kravitz to sing ‘American Woman’). Anyway, at one point Cummings decided he needed to go out into the wilderness to, ‘clear his head,’ so he headed off into the trails on the North Shore mountains. Now it may come as a surprise to many of you who know me as a debonair man about town, the person with his hand on the pulse of the cognoscenti, the trendsetting, style maker that I am today, however at that point in my life I was going through my hermit/mountain man phase, and was living in a small hut on Hollyburn Mountain (on a side note, this living off the land, getting back to nature stuff is highly overrated). So there I was, sitting outside my little shack underneath a giant Douglas Fir trying to keep down my latest backcountry culinary creation (moss à la tree bark, sprinkled with a soupcon of wild mushroom stems that may or may not have been poisonous), when I heard melodious cries for help.

I instantly thought  to myself, Why, that sounds like Burton Cummings and he’s in trouble! Off I sprinted, grabbing my favourite walking stick and cap made entirely of hand-woven pinecones, in search of the yelling that sounded like a cross between late Jimmy Hendrix and early Robert Plant.

It wasn’t long before I came across Order of Canada recipient Cummings and found him face to face with an angry black bear who was clearly intent on tearing Canada’s most cherished rocker since Neil Young from limb to limb.

Apparently Cummings had made the mistake of taking along his own trail energy concoction, an unusual mix of fresh berry compote and honey preserved in fish oils. This concoction, besides being completely nauseating to 99.9% of the rest of the human population, is also an elixir to bears of all species and they will do almost anything to get their hands on it; lie, cheat, steal, trick you into a crooked game of three card monte, and if all else fails they will simply take it by force.

This was the stage Cummings was at with his bear adversary, who had already failed with the old bait and switch con (one thing I learned from backcountry living is that under no circumstances should you trust a bear).

Fortunately I arrived on the scene in the nick of time, and before the bear could lunge and take out the six-time platinum and Grammy award winner recording artist, I did the only thing that will stop any bear anywhere in his tracks: in my tremulous baritone I began to sing ‘Snowbird,’ by Ann Murray, which first froze the advancing bear in his tracks and then sent him running for cover.

Cummings was so impressed he said he would be forever in my debt, “and I don’t even like Ann Murray,” he added.

So yeah, he came by to hang out and talk about old times and ask my advice on future records. Although, to be honest, I really don’t know a lot about the music industry and between you and me I always thought Bachman Turner Overdrive was a better band than the Guess Who. Come to think of it, why the hell couldn’t it have been Randy who needed to, ‘clear his head’?

Oh well…wait did I ever tell you about the time I got drunk with Randy Bachman at the 2004 Juno Awards in Winnipeg? It went like this, I was in my jazz flute phase and Bachman walked into this bar…

The mighty Zalm!

Well I warned you he would be back someday and now he’s here in all his fuaxtanned, fantastic glory – it’s former premier Bill Vander ‘The Zalm’ Vanderzalm and his new cause célèbre that has vaulted The Zalm back into the political stratosphere, well maybe not stratosphere but we’ll give him troposphere. It’s all due to his not so quiet revolution to recall the H.S.T legislation, and the movement is gaining ground and crossing party lines since NDPers who realize Carole James is only popular when compared to Campbell and even then it’s close, are shrugging their shoulders and deciding, what the hell, it can’t hurt to try and ride The Zalm’s coattails and see where this goes.

Where it goes, as I’ve been saying for years if anyone cared to listen, is Campbell running to a waiting helicopter on the legislature’s front lawn, solo since Mrs. Campbell gave up on him years ago, and waving his red Olympic mittened hands before flying off into the sunset amid general cheering, that is except for the shattered Liberal party he’ll leave behind.

Vanderzalm of course hopes to revive the fortunes of the long marginalized B.C Conservative Party through his H.S.T revolution. But say in the unlikely event he is successful (don’t get me wrong I wish him success, but…) what would Vanderzalm bring to the table besides revoking the H.S.T?

Well  it’s almost a certainty he would bring in legislation banning Asian realtors who wear loud hats (for all of you Ontario immigrants that’s a reference to…oh just look it up I can’t explain everything.)

He would bring back the grizzly hunt, which would be unpopular with the environmental crowd but hugely popular with the blood thirsty Norman crowd who currently have to let their cross bows and Mastiffs sit idle while the great beasts roam the country side terrorizing innocent berry pickers (so he would get the berry picker vote as well). Yes that Vanderzalm knows the political culture of B.C like no other.

Also on the plus side Vanderzalm would pledge to be a true free market leader, not just free markets for his four buddies at the golf club, which isn’t really a free market, however the last time someone tried to explain this to Campbell he had a temper tantrum and had to be put on the punishment step until he could be civil again.

Vanderzalm, so it’s been reported has also changed his attitudes towards the gay and lesbian community since his last tenure as premier and apparently he now has no problem with their right to exist, as long as they go to Mass.

So where does all of this leave Carole James, who is now caught between sniping at the hapless Campbell and trying to ignore the rising popularity of Vanderzalm.

“Damn, couldn’t someone put the stake back in his heart,” she might be thinking (oh come on that’s not that much of a stretch.)

For one brief shining moment James, the most unlikely person ever to have a chance at being elected premier since Amour Des Cosmos, had a shot at being elected premier. Now she has to decide, attack Campbell for bringing in the H.S.T and attack Vanderzalm for fighting the H.S.T or doing nothing and hoping the electorate don’t notice come 2013. My advice to James take the George Costanza route, the less you do the better off you’ll be. But still, she’s up against the mighty Zalm personality and just watch, once it gets fired up it’s fantastic (to Ontario immigrants, you see Zalm had this thing where he always said…ah nevermind.)

What would Jesus do?

Easter is here again and it’s open season on bunnies. Actually it’s not, except in Australia, where it’s time for the great Easter rabbit hunt. Well it’s always great rabbit hunt time in Australia, but at Easter everyone wears colourful hats while blasting away at the fast-breeding rodents, who have no natural predators in the land Down Under.

Why can’t we have a proper Easter hunt? Why does it have to be about finding chocolate eggs? To my mind, arming eight year-olds with 12-gauges and letting them blast away is far more entertaining than watching them crawl around local parks looking for treats. Also, hunting small furry animals teaches them valuable life lessons, like, for instance, that double-ought buckshot is lethal at short range, but can really only wound someone at 40 yards.

However, if you feel that firearms are somehow ‘unCanadian’, then let’s arm those kiddies with clubs and do it the old-fashioned way (old-fashioned being the commonly accepted colloquial term for Neolithic). Really, it’s about time we got back to our hunter-gatherer roots—returning to our earthy origins is the perfect tonic for these modern times. That is, as long as I have an electric range to come home to, so I can cook up a little roast bunny . . . not to mention a plasma screen TV to watch the video replay of all the blood sport fun . . .

Okay, yes, I know, Easter is really a religious holiday and the whole bunny thing is just a side show to keep children busy while the rest of us drink Jack Daniels from a flask and try to stay awake through the requisite sermon on how Jesus died for our sins. (Helpful hint – don’t drink Jack through a straw.)

Personally, I think Jesus would be down with bringing a little more levity to the situation. “Yes, I’m dead, and you’re all pretty bummed, but go out and have some fun, revel in the fact that you’re still alive, and if you happen to have a significant other go breed like bunnies.”

Unlikely, you say? Perhaps (and yes, I realize I’ve just made the Catholic hit list) but I’ve never been a fan of the vengeful God theory or the massive guilt trip thing. Jesus seemed like a pretty live-and-let-live guy, so what’s with all the fire and brimstone undertaken in his name? I think he would have preferred that we drink, eat and be merry, as long as we didn’t impinge on anyone else’s eating, drinking and being merry and that we took some time to make sure others less fortunate were also able to take part in the eating, drinking and merry-making.

I’ll concede he probably wouldn’t be a big fan of hunting small animals with clubs. But I’d be willing to forgo the entertainment of mixing blood sport with childish innocence if it meant less sermonizing and images of Jesus being whipped by Roman legionnaires (now there were guys who put the blood into bloodsport), and more reveling in the joys of the world.