but let’s tell the truth here. All you Liberals have ever done is give more ammunition to the separatists. All you do is stir them up…screw it up…make things worse…cause even more trouble.”
Passionate, well-spoken callers like this, no matter what their stance, are more than welcome on my show so I’m only too happy to let him continue, although what he’s saying is making me feel very uneasy.
“Look at Trudeau.” he says. “He’s the guy that really started all of this when he repatriated the Constitution without Quebec’s support in 1982. And now look what’s happening. Ever since the day he and the Queen signed that damned thing on Parliament Hill the situation has gone from bad to worse. More and more trouble. Downhill all the way. We’ve jumped from only 40 per cent support for separation in the 1980 referendum to probably more than 50 per cent support this time and you damn Liberals have been in charge for most of that time.”
I try to point out that Brian Mulroney, a Progressive Conservative, was in power when the Meech Lake accord failed in 1987, but he isn’t buying any of that.
“All Mulroney was trying to do with Meech Lake and Charlottetown was fix the mess Trudeau made, but now look at the corner your great friend Jean Chrétien has painted us into. And don’t forget this is the guy who told us regular people to butt out. ‘We Liberals will take care of the situation,’ he told us ‘don’t worry, the Liberals are in charge!’ Ya, right. Great job Chrétien. Great job you Liberals!”
I try to offer a half-hearted defence but his signal is beginning to fade. It is his parting shot that readjusts that final screw in my head.
“Ya,” he says. “It was mostly you Liberals who got us into this mess and as usual it’s going to have to be mostly us conservatives to get us out of it.”
He is right of course, and what’s more, I know it!
Chapter 3
“Non” Wins, Barely.
Three days later (October 30, 1995) a small crowd of grim-faced, obviously very nervous people, begins to gather around my makeshift broadcast location assembled on Montreal’s Ste-Catherine Street just across from la Baie. Amazingly, local radio and TV in Montreal are providing almost no daytime coverage of this, perhaps the most historic event in Canada’s history, so those drawn to our location are hungry for any kind of information.
I’m broadcasting to 12 different radio stations spread across the country from Halifax to Vancouver, so in an effort to paint as vivid and accurate a picture as possible of how Montrealers are dealing with what could be their last day as Canadians, I’m doing live interviews on the street and on several occasions we manage to hook things up so those gathered around me can talk directly to listeners in places like Regina, Edmonton and Calgary.
For the most part the Montrealers we’re talking with are staunch and very worried federalists and aren’t afraid to say so. It quickly becomes obvious that many of those outside the province have never really considered the plight of federalists, especially Anglos, in an independent Quebec.
One very concerned caller from Edmonton points out that this lack of understanding between the two solitudes is another failure of Liberal policy. “Most of us in the West never think of the plight of federalists in Quebec, mainly because no one has ever told us they even exist. When most of us out here look at Quebec all we tend to see is a bunch of damn separatists who never seem happy about anything unless we’re pumping money into their pockets hand over fist! Hells bells,” he says, “if I’d known there were so many loyal Canadians in Quebec I’d have joined you at the big rally down there!” It’s a sentiment shared by several western callers.
When I raise the possibility of armed resistance from native Indians or others a look of concern and sometimes fear leaps into the faces surrounding me.
At one point a lively debate breaks out on-air between a federalist and a separatist. The federalist claims the referendum is really nothing more than racism—the separatist, of course, denies it. It’s a very heated exchange that, as much as anything we have heard from either camp, illustrates the deep mistrust and animosity between the two sides. (When I interview that same separatist the next day after the narrow federalist victory he breaks into tears.)
The one thing agreed on by almost everyone—on the phone from faraway places and here on windy Ste-Catherine Street—is that the Liberals, from Trudeau right through to Jean Chrétien have really screwed things up. I make no attempt to argue with them. How could I?
It is a caller from Calgary who sums it up best.
“No matter what happens with the vote today,” he says bitterly, “after this bloody mess anyone who ever again votes Liberal just cannot have their head screwed on straight!”
Thus is born a new Conservative and eventually, the idea for a book!
Chapter 4
Left Wing Bafflegab!
One of the reasons the left wing has been so successful in pushing its agenda onto the long-suffering and totally unsuspecting public is because of the special language the “progressives” use. A kind of lefty code you might say. In fact the word progressive itself is a good example of a code word that has been expropriated by the left as a signal of self-righteous, smug, self-con-gratulation.
In particular, the left wing has been extremely successful at rescuing obscure words and phrases from the dustbin of the English language or creating brand new combinations of words and even inventing some of their own. Never has the use of words such as progressive, sustainability, ecosystem, landfills, diversity, footprint, composting, closure, healing, and so on, been as robust as since the left wing and their brothers in arms, the environmentalists, expropriated those words and many others for their propaganda purposes. Phrases such as retrofitting, greening buildings, community initiatives, flex housing, solid waste management, moving forward, endangered species, wetlands, ecosystems, green energy and green jobs suddenly sprang to prominence.
Of all the lefty code words, however, the one I enjoy the most is the word “transparency.” You would be hard-pressed to get through a two minute interview with Bob Rae, Elizabeth May, Al Gore or David Suzuki without “transparency” being dragged out at least a dozen times. One of the worst accusations hurled constantly against that “dreaded concealer of a secret agenda, Stephen Harper,” is that his government lacks transparency.
It is especially delightful to hear anyone with the CBC using the word since it is highly doubtful if there is a publicly funded organization anywhere in Canada that is less transparent!
I suspect that there is an inverse correlation between the use of the word and the degree of transparency of the individual or institution using it. The more you kick around the word transparency the less transparent you are. It’s certainly true with the CBC, but while the “Mother Corp” may have perfected the technique of essentially telling the public they have no right to know how or where their money is being spent so buzz off, others on the left have developed a very clever device to hide the truth, utilizing their special “code words.” It’s called “bafflegab.”
A typical example of bafflegab perfected is a response one of my listeners received when he asked a city councillor exactly what the Community Sustainability Department of the City of Ottawa does, the same questions I have asked repeatedly for months on my radio program.
We’re spending millions of taxpayer’s dollars on something called the Ottawa Community Sustainability Department. Don’t laugh, you probably have one of these things in your town, too. So my questions are: Exactly what do we get for our money? What is the purpose of this department? How do their highly paid employees spend a typical day? Since most of the communities involved have been around for a hundred or more years, far longer than any city councillor, they appear very sustainable to me, so how do you propose to improve on that and why? And above