Paul Stanway at the Edmonton Sun has an excellent column in today's paper, where he admonishes Canadians as being lazy voters:

We've reached the point where Canadians really must stop hiding behind the excuse of battered voter syndrome. We are not innocent bystanders. We are a part of this process, and if a substantial majority of Canadian voters once again buys the Liberal excuses and obfuscation, our democracy will be in peril.

And points out that there probably isn't a "hidden Tory agenda". Personally, I think anyone who really belives in such things also belives that the moon landing was staged.

The traditional argument that the Grits are the only party that can maintain Canadian unity, to which has lately been grafted the Chretien-Martin knee-jerk that any conservative alternative (Reform, Alliance, Conservative) involves a "hidden agenda" to destroy the social programs that have allegedly come to define us as a nation.

Let's take the last one first. What triggered the prime minister's outburst in the Commons was the release of a report titled A Canada Strong and Free, published by two notable think-tanks - the Montreal Economic Institute and Vancouver's Fraser Institute. Authored by former Ontario premier Mike Harris and former Reform leader Preston Manning, it's a thoughtful attempt to draw a conservative agenda for the 21st century. (You can read a summary at www.fraserinstitute.ca.)

But it's not the agenda the PM would have you believe. On the subject of health care, Martin called it a prescription to "privatize medicare," but here's what Harris actually said: "The objective is to ensure that Canadians will continue to be fully insured against catastrophic illness and to have universal access to all medically necessary services, regardless of ability to pay, while gaining faster access to better care at lower cost."

Does that sound like the destruction of medicare? The report had nothing to do with Stephen Harper and is not Conservative policy, but we've reached the point where even a discussion of "faster access and better care" is a scary "hidden agenda" of conservatives bent on refusing granny a hip replacement.

And if you accept the Liberal claim to be the only party capable of ensuring national unity, presumably you can explain away the growing popularity of Quebec nationalism since the 1970s and the presence in Ottawa of a separatist party with a majority of Quebec seats? The polls suggest the Bloc will take even more seats in the next election, as a direct result of Adscam - the Liberals' ham-fisted and repugnant effort to hose down separatist fervour in the wake of the last Quebec referendum.

So why is it that so many Canadians still buy into the argument that the Liberals are the only party that understands Quebec, and the only party capable of keeping Quebec within Canada? Blind faith? Timidity? Stupidity? Ignorance?

Yup, that about covers it. Let's think about unity for a second. Is that what Martin is really going to base his platform on? Again? Haven't the Liberals already spent enough of our hard-earned cash on unity? Not to mention that all this unity talk oppresses (yes, I used that popular left-wing word) the right of Quebec to seperate, if they so desire. I'm fine with us trying to talk it out, but we've been victims of extortion at the hands of Quebec and the Liberals (in the name of Quebec) for far too long. Besides, they only really try to seperate when we have a Liberal government in charge. Coincidence? No. A Conservative government puts more power in the hands of the individual provinces, which is all Quebec really wants anyway.

Unity is not a platform.

"We are not America" is not a platform.

Conservative "hidden agenda's" do not exists, and are therefore not a platform.

Mr. Martin, stop talking about all the others, and start talking about us. The people of Canada are the platform.