A doggone shame
by Gord Henderson
Windsor Star
Poor A.K., the mutt who lost his big floppy ears but won Windsor's big sappy heart, will find the Ontario legislature a lonely place when he arrives there today as the star attraction at an animal welfare rally.
A.K., and I presume that's an acronym for Avtomat Kalashnikova, the legendary AK-47 Soviet assault rifle, will discover that you could fire a cannon through the main lobby at Queen's Park in Toronto and not hit anything because the inhabitants have all skedaddled.
Among the items left wagging in the breeze when Premier Dalton McGuinty decided to gas this legislative session 31/2 weeks ahead of schedule was a private member's bill that would have sunk real teeth into penalties for animal abusers.
Put forward by Bob Runciman, a former Conservative cabinet minister, veteran eastern Ontario MPP and longtime law-and-order crusader, its provisions included jail terms of up to two years, $60,000 fines and lifetime ownership bans for convicted animal abusers.
But Runciman's bill to protect A.K. and his defenceless little compatriots is history. It took a back seat to the McGuinty crew's overwhelming desire to get the hell out of Dodge and go blow some of that swag snagged last Christmas when they awarded themselves salary, RRSP and severance hikes totalling 31 per cent.
Who was driving the getaway car when the Dalton Gang roared out of Toronto bound for Pearson International Airport and some pre-election rest and relaxation in discreet time-out zones, like the satiny south of France and sun-drenched Tuscany? There's no point asking because the answer, as we've all learned the hard way from this bunch, might well be a brazen lie.
HUNG OUT TO DRY
It's a doggone shame A.K. (lil' Kalashnikova) and his friends have been hung out to dry by the McGuinty Liberals. Abused animals might be a priority with Windsorites, but not with this government.
Still, you have to admit pulling the plug early was a shrewd, self-serving tactic on the government's part. It iced a potentially damaging committee cross-examination of a cabinet minister over allegations that the provincial government has a sponsorship mess on its hands, involving a $32-million slush fund directed to Liberal-friendly organizations, which bears comparison with the federal sponsorship scandal that destroyed the Paul Martin regime.
Instead of facing an ugly June grilling by their foes, the Liberals (those who've deigned to stay in the country) will be out working the grills and pumping the flesh at barbecues across the province.
Is the electorate as dumb, forgetful and uncaring as Liberal strategists believe we are? We're four months away from finding out. But the early evidence suggests there may be more than arrogance behind their smug conclusion that they can get away with this.
They need only look back to that sneaky Yuletide money grab when the Liberals and their Conservative co-conspirators teamed up to sweeten their paycheques and retirement incomes by as much as 31 per cent overnight.
I predicted at the time that they would get away with it because most folks were busy filling their faces and burning out credit cards in the annual Christmas consumer carnival and couldn't care less about Queen's Park.
That's precisely how it worked. A few taxpayers squawked. But by January the pay heist was old news. The world had moved on.
The McGuinty government might be clueless about a lot of things. But it understands timing.
It knows that in a week or two Ontario residents will go into summer tan and sand mode. We'll chill out and kick back and nobody, apart from the party faithful, will want to hear a single word about politics.
When Labour Day rolls around and we slap our serious faces back on and the election begins in earnest, nobody will remember how the Liberals betrayed A.K. and friends by killing a private member's bill. And nobody will recall how the McGuinty government suppressed potentially devastating queries about dubious handouts. Or so the Liberals hope.
You know what's coming. Like a squirrel hiding nuts for the winter, the McGuinty team will have stashed away a long list of popular spending initiatives that can be rolled out this fall in the grand old "buy the fools with their own money" exercise.
Little wonder McGuinty found the gall to look Ontario residents in the eye Sunday and insist that this time he really means it when he says he won't raise our taxes.
He takes us for fools.
