Opinion From Above The 49th Parallel

A piece in "The View From the West" section of the Winnipeg Free Press by a former Canadian foreign minister takes DL's government to task in an open letter to Condi.

"As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.

Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children. Just chalk that up to a different sense of priorities about what a national government's role should be when there isn't a prevailing mood of manifest destiny."

Man, if it weren't for the weather, I'd move to Canada in a heartbeat. I've chatted with a lot of our neighbors to the north over the 'net and I've enjoyed the time I've spent with every one of them. My son is all for the idea. He'd love to live somewhere where it snows every year. I think after the first winter he spent shoveling the drive clear every day he might take a different attitude about the whole thing.