“There is no moving on from a lie this big.”
So concludes a magnificent article by Postmedia journo Michael Den Tandt about the F-35 scandal, although the word “scandal” in this instance seems utterly insufficient. It doesn’t begin to cover the duplicity involved, the deep political corruption, the incompetence and sleaze, the outright theft of fabulous sums from the taxpayers’ pockets to serve Prime Minister Stephen Joseph Harper’s agenda.
Den Tandt doesn’t waste words as his grim, powerful narrative unfolds. With economy and perfect clarity, he sketches nothing less than the death of Harper’s reputation. This is a in Canadian history. There may be three more years to run in the CPC’s likely stolen mandate (that other on-going scandal), but as of now Harper is running a lame-duck government, one that will henceforward be the target of as much public ridicule as righteous indignation.
If we were to have an election today, Kim Campbell’s performance in 1993 might well look like a landslide. There comes a point in politics when all but the most seasoned ideologue grows uncomfortable and then nauseous, as their fundamental sense of what is right is betrayed before their eyes. Think: on behalf of an utterly false austerity binge, seniors-to-be are seeing their benefits slashed, the CBC has been literally decimated, social and environmental programs have been wounded or killed, thousands of public employees are being kicked to the curb along with the services they provide, food safety and health have been compromised, First Nations have received yet another kicking, and the hacking goes on and on. But the cumulative total of all these painful cuts, affecting just about every ordinary Canadian in one way or another, runs far less than the cost of the F-35 boondoggle.
Good grief, we’re talking billions of dollars here—billions and billions and billions, cost overruns of simply astronomical proportions for a plane that doesn’t even work. But Harper and his inner circle lied through their teeth to the Canadian people. If there was any doubt about that when the Auditor General’s report first came out, his subsequent clarification makes no bones about it.
They lied. They simply lied.
The Prime Minister of our country has just seen his plausible deniability—and his pants—go up in smoke. His one winner card, the one he always plays when the going gets rough, is his allegedly masterful handling of the economy. That was always a joker, and now it’s gone missing, along with his personal integrity and credibility.
This one’s huge. Epic. A political tipping-point like no other in our history. Best take shelter, Conservatives, because in the immortal words of Bob Dylan, a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.