PROLONGING A CULTURE OF DEFEAT

If you need any further evidence that our lives are run by trolls, just watch any newscast out of Ottawa this week. My God people! Maybe the Prime Minister we've got is an ill-tempered, ideological bore and not the best guy to be running this country. But these other guys....

Gilles Duceppe -- a man who hates Canada!

Jack Layton -- a man who hates the free enterprise system!

And Stéphane Dion -- a man who hates that he's such an endless fricken loser!

Yeah, Canadians are going to be better served by that combination.

Elsewhere, those supporting the Coalition keep pointing out that 62% of Canadians voted for a more "progressive" option -- including the 13% who voted to take Quebec out of Canada. Yeah, that's a real progressive agenda!

Play with numbers all you want, folks. Sure, Harper only got 37% of the popular Vote. But through 12 years in power, Jean Chretien never got above 38%. That's democracy in a multi-party system. Which is supposed to mean that YOU get a say in how your lives are governed, not have those decisions made for you by people who had a different set of goals when they campaigned for and won your vote.

I'm originally from Western Canada, though I've lived far more of my life in Ontario. But I remember clearly, as all Western Canadians do, how our needs and concerns were eternally back burnered over a greater need to keep the country united. And we understood that and (albeit grudgingly sometimes) went along with it.

We went along with it even when we sensed most Quebecers were not much different from us and didn't really want to leave, in the process enriching and empowering a governing mentality that panders to regionalism over what might be the correct course of action.

Regionalism just might be the greatest handicap this country has. In our own TV and film business, people who live and work in one province can't work in another without economically penalizing the production. What kind of apparently "Free" country doesn't allow its people to work wherever their skills are needed?

Regionalism has allowed a culture to develop in this country where one part of the country can be played against another for the benefit of those who enrich themselves and solidify their power bases on the fear they can generate in the rest of us.

And fear always leads to only one outcome -- defeat. Because this constant chaos drives us further apart and further from the kind of cultural and industrial critical masses that historically are what make things happen in the world.

Last night, driving to a meeting before the party leaders "urgent messages to the people", I heard a CBC radio reporter ask one politico whether his calling Bloc Quebecois members separatists might not offend some in Quebec.

And I thought, "Wow, here we go again!" Somehow it's wrong for Canadians to call out the people who want to destroy their country. And some of that long forgotten Western Canadian in me stirred and said, "Gee, as far as the CBC is concerned, a Canadian from Quebec has more value than pretty much everybody who lives North and West of Toronto".

Well, of course, following that line of thinking leads to madness.

But replaying the old tapes continues the Culture of Defeat that has too long burdened any effort to create something new and exciting in this country.

Perhaps -- and I'm calling on every try-to-be-fair-minded cell in my body here -- perhaps -- a coalition will better and more fully represent the views of the country. Maybe a guy who can't even get a DVD from one office to another on time and frames himself with a book entitled "Hot Air" over his shoulder will run the country more effectively.

And maybe Jack won't stage a coup within a coup like he almost did last night by demanding he also get TV time to speak for a coalition that had already been spoken for by its designated leader.

And maybe Gilles Duceppe won't demand that every Tax dollar collected goes to Quebec.

And maybe the Premier of Alberta does not have the "Plan B" he's inferred to protect his people from being pillaged.

And maybe this will only last until the Liberal party appoints Michael Ignatief their leader -- a guy who has written in favor of torture and now opposes free elections -- Gee, we can have our own Robert Mugabe!

And in all this chaos, is anybody going to deny the desires of Broadcasters they will depend on come election time or provide funding for "arts projects" which are always short term endeavors when auto workers are losing their homes?

No -- the Culture of Defeat will triumph once more, because it's more reliable and predictable than change.

Viva the Three Amigos!