Jack Be Nimble

Jack is feeling his oats. Things have turned out really swell for the leader of the New Democratic Party. His breezy self-confidence was infectious, really impressed people. Particularly the voters in Quebec who liked his smile a whole lot, his spunk and his cane as a prop to remind everyone what a courageous fellow he is.

Why he could have stood a cardboard cut-out resembling a human being out as a candidate in most of the Quebec ridings and still seen a sweep. In fact, that’s just what he did, in effect, given that some of those warm bodies couldn’t be bothered to campaign, to make themselves available for all-candidates’ meetings for public edification, and many didn’t even live in the ridings, much less bother to pop around.

A few absented themselves from the country during the campaign. Nothing seemed to matter; Quebecers, so prone to insult and offence, found nothing untoward in any of this. Out they came in their droves, and drove back the Bloc Quebecois, dropping them from owning 43 seats to a meagre four. In the process astonishing both Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton.

As far as Jack Layton is concerned, he and his party won the election. As far as Gilles Duceppe is concerned, the fact that he was not re-elected in his own riding is a nightmare he has yet to awaken from. The misery of forlorn failure etched deeply in the frowning downturned mouth that presented as a model caricature of abject dejection.

The election, according to Jack, effectively launched a “new chapter in Canadian politics”. For the NDP had been gifted with a “clear mandate” from voters across this great country to represent “hard-working families”. No other political party in Canada has any concern whatever for the hard-working families of the country.

Certainly not the Conservatives who had lowered taxes, given parents additional breaks, and allowed seniors to combine incomes at tax time. The relief that the NDP, given the chance, would offer to hard-working families in Canada would come with higher taxation and greater support for union entitlements.

Jack is celebrating the “clear mandate” given to the NDP, though. “It’s a mandate that Stephen Harper is best to not ignore”, Jack crowed. For as the leader of the official Opposition, someone who is now entitled to move into Stornoway as an extension of living off the taxpayer which Jack and Olivia have had great run experimenting with in Toronto’s assisted housing, he and the NDP are on a roll.

Of course, being so completely focused on the startling success of the NDP in capturing 103 Seats in Parliament, with 58 rookie Members of Parliament from Quebec alone, mentored by the single experienced Quebec MP, the fact that Canada now has four years of a majority Conservative government appears to have escaped his notice.

For a majority government has carte blanch to comport itself in a manner commensurate with a confident minority government, without the acidic suspense of the opposition parties continually threatening to shut down the government and take it over themselves.

But there’s Jack, expressing his joy and jubilation and warning Stephen Harper that he will personally hold him “accountable”. The NDP alone represents a party that protects Canada’s health care system, cares about improving senior pensions, doing right by the environment and stopping corporate interests in their tracks.

“Together, we’re going to hold Stephen Harper’s government to account. Together, we’ll continue to grow our movement, reaching out to more Canadians and more communities”.

Go to it, Jack. And while you’re at it, just remember all those things you promised Quebec to persuade voters there that there was no need to maintain the Bloc in Parliament, for the NDP stands prepared to badger Canadians and threaten the country to respect the collective will of French Canadians as uniquely deserving of very special attention in recognition of their extravagant claims and superior entitlements.