With Christmas Day less than 48 hours away and NORAD’s series of integrated radar systems and fighter jets ready to track Santa Claus’ every move as he makes his way to homes across the planet, it is time to offer some last-minute gift suggestions for some of our more public luminaries who might have fallen off Santa’s naughty or nice lists.
In the federal and provincial traditions of purchasing new footwear before bringing down a budget, we suggest giving Mayor Nolan Crouse, and councillors Gareth Jones and Roger Lemieux comfortable shoes for exercising good fiscal sense during this year’s budget process which, despite their best efforts, still came in with a 2.89 per cent tax increase. Coun. Len Bracko deserves some candy canes for his forward-thinking but unrealistic proposals of capping tax increases at 1.5 per cent for the next two years, and his one-dollar-per $100,000 of assessment LRT levy suggestion.
For the rest of council and city administration, we would suggest replicas of former United States’ President Harry S. Truman’s infamous desk placard, which read, “The Buck Stops Here.” It will serve as a reminder to all, including those councillors who run for office again next fall, that vigilance means asking plenty of questions and making tough decisions instead of going with the flow.
Provincially, Santa should give two gifts to our besieged premier, Ed Stelmach. First, a cheque for $134,000 so he can put together another awkward, splashy TV propaganda piece explaining why, after bungling the beginning of the H1N1 vaccination program and encouraging everyone to go out and get immunized, he showed such great leadership by not getting his own inoculation.
We would also ask Santa for a paring knife in anticipation of cuts to the provincial budget in the spring, but given the minimum $300 million on the chopping block for education and the yawning deficit at Alberta Health Services, we believe a butcher knife would better suit Stelmach’s style. After all, why make hard decisions when you can just slash your troubles away?
Let us not forget our forgettable provincial opposition parties in the Alberta Liberals and the NDP who, despite all of the evidence before their faces, refuse to accept that Albertans never have and never will see them as a credible government in waiting. Given the surge in popularity of the Wildrose Alliance, whether deserving or not, we ask Santa to save both the provincial Liberals and NDP the expense of their own political tombstones and bring one for each, dated to 2012 — the anticipated time of the next election — bearing the inscription, “Well, we tried.”
For Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who appears to be more concerned with breaking down credible civil servants than investigating perceived wrongdoings in Afghanistan, we ask for a vintage copy of the Geneva Conventions so he can learn exactly why transferring POWs and enemy combatants to another government that might torture them is not only wrong, but illegal on the international stage.
And lastly, for the general public — for those who stood idly by as taxes went up and then complained about it after the fact, for those who ignored the opportunity for public input when it was available at any level and for those who spend more energy finding a reason not to vote than simply marking down their X — we ask for the traditional lump of coal. Democracy, after all, is a gift and none of you deserve it.
