{"id":5942,"date":"2005-11-29T11:07:17","date_gmt":"2005-11-29T16:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5942"},"modified":"2005-11-29T11:07:17","modified_gmt":"2005-11-29T16:07:17","slug":"a-telling-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-telling-comparison\/","title":{"rendered":"A telling comparison"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m no expert in Canadian government, but I live a few hours from the border, watch CBC, and keep an eye on Canadian politics. And yesterday, with the fall of Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin<\/a>, was a blockbuster day. For American political purposes, the events offer a telling comparison.<\/p>\n

After months of political instability, the government of Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin fell Monday evening when three opposition parties united to topple him with a no-confidence vote in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

Martin’s center-left Liberal Party had been dogged by a corruption scandal. It will now face voters in an expected January election that could end 12 years of Liberal rule in America’s largest trading partner — after a campaign over the Christmas holidays that the prime minister argues most Canadians don’t want.<\/p>\n

The opposition Conservatives, the leftist New Democrats and the separatist Bloc Quebecois joined forces to bring down Martin’s government, which had lost its majority in an election last year. Monday’s final vote was 171-133.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what, you ask, was this corruption scandal that led to the demise of Martin’s government? In what is often called the “sponsorship scandal,” Martin’s Liberal party paid advertising firms $85 million for political campaign work in Quebec. Unfortunately, the contracts went to firms that had political ties to the party — and they took the money without doing any real work. Voters were disgusted and Liberals took a hit in the June 2004 elections, which ultimately led to Martin’s fall yesterday.<\/p>\n

Also take a moment to consider some context. Liberals inherited a budget deficit, which they proceeded to eliminate. The Canadian economy is strong and its national unemployment rate is at a 30-year low. For that matter, Martin — who played no role in the corruption controversy and was cleared of wrongdoing — not only issued a dramatic apology on behalf of his government, his party also paid back the money that was misspent.<\/p>\n

And yesterday, the Prime Minister who has been fighting for his political life saw the end of his rule.<\/p>\n

Now, there’s plenty of interesting angles about Canada’s parties and positioning for the upcoming election — my friend Michael Stickings is covering this<\/a> nicely — but I can’t help but notice a difference in standards. Paul Martin fell yesterday because of a minor corruption scandal that he had nothing to do with. George W. Bush, in a different system, is directly involved in several devastating scandals and Congress won’t even convene a hearing. Worse, Bush offers no apology and makes no effort to make amends.<\/p>\n

Where’s our no-confidence vote?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m no expert in Canadian government, but I live a few hours from the border, watch CBC, and keep an eye on Canadian politics. And yesterday, with the fall of Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, was a blockbuster day. For American political purposes, the events offer a telling comparison. After months of political instability, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}