Facts are now surfacing that when something goes wrong within these nation-wide distribution networks, they really go wrong. Suddenly a food security problem doesn’t require an isolated 100-mile solution; instead it requires national crises management from coast to coast on an epic scale.
Listeria is a unique bacterium since it doesn’t go away in cold temperatures that fact means that when Mr.Harper heads to the Arctic to expound his chilly values that promote Canadian sovereignty so that resources can be exploited from under the thawing ice, that listeria could follow him, and it simply won’t go away no matter how far north he goes.
Listeria represents the many tainted issues plaguing the Harper Tories, and they have discovered that manufacturing diversions isn’t working as well as they expected. It’s frustrating indeed, the only thing keeping them in the game is that the other parties are performing equally as bad. It’s as though their surfacing from a pub brawl having been beaten up by two or three grandmothers.
So as Canada becomes embedded with listeria, the Prime Minister may take this opportunity to call a federal election, perhaps hoping that as many Liberals and NDP’ers as possible will be down with severe flu symptoms and may not make it to the polls. Those Tory supporters in rural areas of course will have been growing their own beef on a hoof and more than likely didn’t have Maple Leaf on the menu, that’s of course, only if they’re slaughtering that bull in the illegal butcher shop behind the barn.
The Tory handlers who have been in non-stop polling mode for a couple of years now must know every weird scenario that could emerge on voting day, and must know everything about our political choices by now. My guess is they have arrived at a place where their advice to Mr. Harper is, “Going to the polls is political suicide as a opposed to not going to the polls which is also political suicide – Mr. Harper you are in a terminal stalemate”.
Their advice will include another certainty, that this fall will present a number of events that could taint the government so that it’s agenda might as well be a grocery list stuck on a fridge, which might be said, is another place for keeping food safe, unless its tainted with listeria.
This fall Mr. Harper might be explaining by-election losses amidst a national media much more interested in Julie Couillard's book how good the former foreign affairs minister was or wasn’t, while at the same time asking Canadians who would they rather vote for: Barack Obama or Stephen Harper?
And the polls won’t look good on that one, which in turn has a weirding way with any Tory platform linked to Canadian sovereignty.
Tories everywhere must we waking in night sweats as the US election campaign inches closer to voting day as that very ugly word “change” gets mentioned 20 – 30 thousand times a day on the airwaves. The pollsters and handlers will be telling the Tory hard cores, not to worry, those night sweats may just be a mild form of listeria, and unless you’re very young, very old or infirm, there’s really nothing to worry about.
Truly comforting advice for any humanitarian.
Then there will be a few who will perk up and hear that “change” is all about money, which won’t bode well for Mr. Harper either, as more bad news about the economy roles in as those fourth quarter forecasts surface that tell us that the economy is much worst than we ever anticipated, not to mention how big our latest food security bill has become - yes the one that didn’t work.
Mr. Harper has acknowledged the dead heat by saying, "As you know, the polls aren't particularly wonderful," which suggests he’s disappointed about his lack of greater electibility regardless of whether or not the governments able to survive in the House of Commons.
In fact, the government has survived 43 confidence votes in the last parliamentary session, and now the PM has selected the Liberal Green Shift as the divergent path on which to part company with the present environment of minority compromise.
But really it’s not about a Green Shift at all; it’s simply about a shift, a gamble, a leap of faith. Perhaps even a suicidal charge into an enemy line simply to cast an unpredictable event to force an unpredictable outcome – and hope for the best.
Win a majority, and the PM becomes a legend in political strategy, any minority scenario would simply continue a legacy of bridled government, but lose to a majority Liberal win and Mr. Harper would enter the ranks of speaking tours and corporate board appointments.
So the risk is high and unpredictable. Any sudden or extreme shift in public opinion the day before the election caused by a subject or event where there is no sound bite or speech prepared for, could be fatal.
It’s as though the pollsters and handlers don’t matter, they can’t predict the outcome on this one, they have in fact become the refrigerator that holds fresh cold cuts laced with listeria.
It’s perhaps by no cosmic accident that the Maple Leaf brand is attached to this metaphor. Perhaps we have become a nation complacent and willing to accept whatever is in store for us, willing to gamble that we will not completely succumb to whatever government places on the menu, which in the worse case scenario we hope, will bring about just a mild illness with a quick recovery.
I do hope that we are not that complacent, our mistake in judgement could be fatal.
Mr. Harper or for that matter any other leader needs to understand it’s the little things that are most important to Canadians, little things that turn into big life challenging events, like a common bacterium that is allowed to claim the life of a loved one, high fuel and food prices that threaten the pocket books of ordinary people, the impacts of climate change and loss of wild habitat, high interest rates that threaten their homes and the risk of becoming jobless.
Most Canadians care about the north in order to protect the Arctic from exploitation, not to exploit it.
The Tories are in trouble, their not picking up on the issues that mean the most to voters and unless they make their own shift in thinking the electorate will make it for them.
(30)
Don Elzer writes and comments about the future, current affairs, lifestyle and the natural world. He is a director of the Watershed Intelligence Network publishers of The Monster Guide, which can be found at www.themonsterguide.com
He can also be reached by email at: treks@uniserve.com
