lightweight Liberal candidate Carolyn Bennett
"Beer and popcorn" lives on
By Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Monday, May 8, 2006
There were several factors, as there always are, that led to the results of the last federal election and it is impossible to say if there was a defining moment without which Paul Martin and the Liberals would still be in power. One incident that had the potential to make Stephen Harper the Prime Minister of Canada occurred when Paul Martin's director of communications, Scott Reid, told the media that the Conservatives' plan of giving $100 a month to parents for each of their children under the age of six was a bad idea because parents would just spend that money on "beer and popcorn".
What angered Canadians the most about that comment was that Scott Reid is no Barry Bonds--someone who is probably on something while standing way out in left field. Everyone knew that Reid's statements regarding the ability of people to raise their own children accurately reflected how the Liberal Party of Canada views the ordinary Canadian parent. They are nothing; zeros, unable to raise their children without the aid and assistance of the state.
During the race to succeed Martin, lightweight candidate Carolyn Bennett told CTV's Mike Duffy that more children will end up in jail as a result of being raised without the benefit of the Liberal Party's universal daycare program. Bennett said, "There's actually no plan for early learning and child-care spaces. So it's a good job they're putting more money for prisons in the budget because we're going to need them if we don't get this early childhood right".
For those who would like to see the once mighty Liberals banished to the opposition side of the House for the foreseeable future the tragedy is not that Bennett will end up being the leader of the Liberal Party but that she won't.
Like Scott Reid, Bennett is expressing what her party actually believes. What separates her from other candidates like Joe Volpe or Michael Ignatieff is that the latter have the political smarts not to say it. Bennett's statement is, of course a slam to all of those women who choose to stay at home and raise their children. If remarks were ever made about a definable ethnic group; that the way they raise their children leads to higher rates of incarceration, Bennett would be among the first to call for jail for the commission of a hate crime. But parents who don't conform to the Liberal Party view of the world are fair game. They're just too dumb to raise their children without the Liberals' often promised but never delivered universal daycare system.
The Liberal program calls for gobs of the taxpayers' hard earned money to be handed over to the provinces to set up these indoctrination centres for tots. Daycare centres (or early learning centres as the politically correct prefer) will end up like the provinces' public education systems. The money that doesn't go to the bureaucracy will go mostly for salaries for unionized daycare centre workers. And much like the present public education system, parents will have to scramble to make alternate arrangements during the many employee strikes and lockouts that are bound to take place. And this ideal system of the left does absolutely nothing for women who do shift work or work hours outside the traditional 9 to 5 work day. But then these parents, much like stay-at-home moms, simply don't count. And the fact that more and more money will have to be poured into childcare at a time when the population is aging and more money is required for our beloved universal health care doesn't seem to be important.
None of this matters. All that is important is ideology; parents cannot be trusted to raise their own children and to make their own decisions about the welfare of their offspring. Only the government is capable of raising children in a manner that will insure that they will not spend their lives locked up in one of Stephen Harper's proposed new jails. As Scott Reid said parents are good for sitting around while eating popcorn and drinking beer.
It takes a village to raise a child. If that isn't bad enough, now the village idiot wants to be prime minister.
Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. His work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Men's News Daily, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck and The Rant. Arthur can be reached at: aweinreb@rogers.com
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