What if we had a Prime Minister who cared

The Terrible Trio

I have been thinking a lot about politics these days. We might just be moving into an election soon and all in all, it is pretty depressing.

As much as I dislike the Stephen Harper government I feel pretty secure that, as long as they stay as a minority, they cannot really make fundamental change to our country. They are moving in a direction I dislike and appealing to sensibilities I am uncomfortable with but, it is incremental and they can only go so far.

I think what bothers me though is what next? Would I be much happier with Michael Ignatieff. Truth be told I would probably feel a bit more comfortable but, some of my biggest battles over the decades have been against Liberals and Liberal policy.

And lets be honest. The NDP are not going to assume power. Why pretend? I Like a strong left leaning voice in Parliament but I am not sure that these days we even have that.


When it comes to elections the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for” always creeps out from the recesses of my mind.

All this has given me a bad case of the “What if’s”

Just imagine a Prime Minister with a real vision for Canada's role in the world.

So, what if our Prime Minister was a strong supporter of the peace movement?

Imagine a leader who re-established Canada’s role as a Peacekeeper instead of putting us on the front line of a shooting war. Working for peace doesn’t give you swagger but I’d trade a thoughtful, cerebral leader for one who likes playing dress-up with generals, in a heartbeat.

Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize six years before becoming Prime Minister for his key role in developing the predecessor to the United Nations peacekeepers of today which helped to resolve the Suez Crisis between Israel and Egypt while he was working as a diplomat.

It was a good start but we’ve moved out of that track these last few decades.

What if our Prime Minister was an environmentalist?

On both coasts we are pumping raw sewage into our oceans, most of our electricity comes from coal fired power plants, fertilizers and pesticides are poisoning our ground water, sour gas is poisoning cattle and people and the tar sands projects have made our environmental targets impossible to meet.

Instead we support with billions of dollars Canadian, climate change producing, "ethical oil". Oil that isn't produced by cruel tyrannical political regimes. But just the same we get oil produced by the same oil companies that do support those regimes, but we'll just ignore that for now.

Just imagine a Prime Minister who instead of considering global warming left wing propaganda was prepared to stand up and say, “Ok business, we have to find ways to produce clean energy.” Someone who will say, “Yes, it will cost money but, for our future generations it has to be done.” Someone who would be prepared to make Canada’s environmental standards the highest in the world.”

What if we had a Prime Minister who believed in and supported our arts and culture. Someone who saw culture as more than a political opportunity, a gala at which, to the media’s delight, he could play a few bar on the piano?

Imagine a leader who saw the value of investing our tax dollars to support our writers, our poets, our artists and musicians instead of hockey rinks and business, business and more business.

What if we had a Prime Minister who understood that poverty, homelessness, desperation and crime are a part of the same equation. Some one who understood that the solution to that sticky problem is not, hiring more police officers.

What if we had a Prime Minister who believed that Canada should be a world leader in education and research?

What if we had a Prime Minister who valued democracy, human rights and transparency.

What if our Prime Minister was prepared to fix our broken electoral system

What if our prime Minister actually believed in and supported out public broadcaster.

What if the leader really believed in healthcare.

I could go on and on.

Ok, what would it give us?

To start with it would raise Canada’s reputation internationally. It would begin to help us start to rebuild our values and it would make me proud to be a Canadian once again. It could make us a great country. A world leader.

So Stephen, Michael, Jack and Gilles - well I guess not so much Gilles – if you want my support, there it is in a nutshell.

Don’t be afraid now. Give it a try.