Shut Up And Listen 152

An Actual Scandal . . . In Canada . . . What?
Um, yeah, we’ve got an actual scandal in Canada for once. This is odd. I don’t know quite how to think about it. I mean, before this, the biggest thing was when Chrétien might have possibly owned a piece of a hotel and golf course in Quebec. Yeah, big fucking scandal there, eh? Well, now we’ve got one that could quite possibly lead to our new Prime Minister getting his ass thrown out after being Prime Minister for, you know, like two months. And then there’s our Governor General who racked up a huge bill for a “good will” tour last year. We’ve got some actual news for once.
	First up, we have what’s being called “The Sponsorship Scandal” where one hundred million dollars was somehow slipped off to Liberal-friendly advertising firms out of federal funds. This all happened while our new Prime Minister, Paul Martin was the Finance Minister under Jean Chrétien, and it’s been very heavily implied that he knew of it before the Auditor General released a report on Tuesday on the misappropriation of these funds. Hell, apparently he was sent a letter in 2000 telling him to look into this and yet Tuesday was the first time we heard of it.
	Now me, I’m all about the innocent until proven guilty stuff, but this seems like one of those times where although I do consider Martin innocent, I think he’ll ultimately be proven guilty. It could be personal bias getting in the way, because I really don’t like the guy, but that’s how I feel. It’s true that just because you’re named Minister of something in the Cabinet here that you don’t necessarily know anything about that area, but Martin is a fiscally conservative man and took great pride in the job he did as Finance Minister, so for this to happen without his knowledge will only serve to make him look like an incompetent fool. Now, while he may not be found guilty, I think this could end up costing him the election whenever it happens. I mean, he’s trapped between being corrupt or being incompetent. Basically, he’s fucked.
	As for Chrétien’s involvement, that’s a place where I could go either way. I don’t have any strong leanings towards one or the other. He could be guilty, he could be innocent. Of course, Paul Martin isn’t a stupid man and has already hinted strongly that Chrétien is the guy responsible for the whole Sponsorship Scandal. But that just comes across as him attacking a guy who he never really had a good relationship with. Everyone knows that the two guys didn’t like each other and hell, Chrétien tried his best to make Martin’s job as Prime Minister as hard as possible by pushing for a lot of controversially measures that Martin would have to deal with. Maybe Chrétien is guilty and Martin is right in trying to lay blame on him, but come on, it just comes off as trying to fuck over the old guy. Kind of like what the Republicans keep trying to do with bad shit and Clinton.
	And in other news, we fucking hate the Governor General. Damn fucking bitch. Last fall, she went on the road with fifty-nine guests in tow and it’s costing up five point three million dollars. Yeah, she went on some circumpolar junket last fall, visiting Russia, Finland and Iceland over nineteen days and it cost over five million dollars. Hell, we were pissed off when we heard estimates back in the fall that it cost a million dollars. Now we find out it’s five fucking times that amount? Fuck that! We definitely need to get rid of the Governor General. Yeah, five million dollars doesn’t necessarily seem like a lot in the big picture, but come on, this was really an extended vacation for her and her friends where they went to a few countries and had some parties. Seriously. Fuck that whole “spreading good Canadian will” bullshit that they seem to spew as an excuse. Because of this, though, Martin has called for a review of the role, unction and spending powers of the Governor General. Hopefully we’ll finally get rid of this dumb fucking position and sever the last political ties with Britain and actually act like an independent nation.
	Yeah, this week Canada sucked.