Monday, August 08, 2005

Harper Hits Toronto

The Tory caucus gathered in Toronto last week for a miniature policy retreat and something truly shocking happened; policy was announced.

This is a big departure for the Conservatives and it could have severe consequences. If they keep this up people might confuse them with a national party.

The big news is they are proposing a tax break for people who use public transit. This is a 400 million dollar tax break that is aimed directly at big city urban voters. When I heard this I couldn’t really believe it because, well, it makes so much sense. In fact it makes so much sense that I can only assume the Liberals will have stolen it by this time next week and will be calling it their own.

Unfortunately Harper’s announcement didn’t really cause much of a stir in the media because, in the battle for space on the front page, the Tories once again had their asses kicked.

As luck would have it, on the day Harper was making his public transit announcement in Toronto, Paul Martin was in Ottawa introducing Canada’s new Governor General Michaëlle Jean. To be fair Harper tried his damndest to compete with the Prime Minister’s photo op; he invited the media to take pictures of him getting off a Toronto streetcar with his son. In Harper’s world that is pretty dynamic stuff.

You can’t really blame the newspapers on this one. When it comes to photos Michaëlle Jean is just downright way better looking and more interesting than Stephen Harper, no matter what character from the Village people he happens to be dressed as.

It must have been devastating though when he realized that practically every paper in the country ran with the picture of Michelle Jean instead of him on the streetcar. Of course it didn’t hurt that our new GG just happens to have the cutest daughter in Canada.

Somewhere Stephen Harper is yelling at his son “Next time be cuter damn it!”