We can thank the Conservatives for one great thing they have accomplished. They got Canada started as an Independent Dominion within the Empire. I could have included the C.P.R also but that was a corrupt enterprise with an ex-Yankee in charge of it from the get go. Sir John A. our first Prime Minister was a good Scottish Conservative who, shall I say liked to tipple a bit to much but was a canny politician and a great man who guided the fledgling nation through its’ birth. The problem with the cons is they are umbilically attached to big business and the wealthy. That’s why they are conservative, have to keep the Monied in control. After all the Liberals are to close to being socialists and the Socialist, well that just a polite name for Marxist.
For the greater part of our history to date, Federally, Canada has been a centre of the road Liberal country with the Provinces bouncing around between Conservatives, Liberals, or Socialists. Then in 1987 from out of Alberta ( Texas North) came the Reformers founded and led by none other than the bespectacled, self described evangelical christian, son of Ernest Manning, Preston. It was now the West against the East, (cowboys agin dudes) with them somehow ending up the Official Opposition. In 2003 the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservative merged into the Canadian Alliance Party which morphed into the Conservative Party of Canada. Here we stand, nine years later with the bovine herders and wildcatters now governing the country led by (a wannabe emperor) Steven Harper and his toadying cabinet. As I have said before the Gods have a hell of a sense of humour. Mayhaps, though, there is a “Man of Mark” on the horizon, the scion of a former P.M. who will get this country back on the path to its’ potential. One can only trust in the Fates.