Much Ado About Duffy

When people refer to the “news networks,” they’re being generous. They are networks but the “news” is still whatever the editors, publishers, and producers want the voting public to think about. Over the past several weeks, Canadians have been tormented with endless regurgitations from the Mike Duffy trial. Those who want the Harper government to fall—including most of the admittedly left-wing media as well as the obvious parties in the best position to benefit, the Liberals and NDP—have done their best to squeeze every drop of anti-Harper sentiment from the sorry saga of Mike Duffy’s allegedly fraudulent expenses and Nigel Wright’s generous but unwise gesture of paying the senator’s $90,000 tab. All efforts now are to expose the PM and those closest to him as participants in the scheme. At the end of the day, it’s only a story if it can be proven that Mr. Harper lied to the public and an admission of that nature seems less than likely. Still, the “news-hounds” keep trying.

Is there nothing else going on worth talking about? The amount of money and the depth of the scandal are really insignificant when compared with other stories that neither the media nor the leaders of the big parties want to talk about. Some of those stories implicate Mr. Harper in a much more serious way than does the Duffy-Wright affair and yet Tom and Justin and their friends in the Big Media are giving him a pass. What should the media be talking about?

Well, if the abuse of taxpayers’ money is the issue, why not talk about the $6 million payment to Planned Parenthood that took place on Mr. Harper’s watch. That’s more than 60 times the Duffy $90,000 and it went to an organization now shown (in the States) to be guilty of dismembering live babies and selling their parts. Where’s the journalistic interest in exposing the truth?

How about the $400,000 that went to the Toronto Gay Pride Parade? Yes, it’s an old story but much more interesting than repeated questions about “who was in the room?” when Mr. Wright put forth his plan to save the Conservative Party image.

Why is no major media reporting daily on the national debt that has grown to nearly $620 billion under a Conservative government? Surely the $79 million interest payment that Canadian taxpayers shell out every single day might be a topic for further discussion?

Then there’s the 2010 document “Gender Identity in Schools” that came out under Conservative Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq. This document has been used by provinces like Ontario and Alberta as justification for their horrendous programs of student indoctrination regarding sexual orientation. Canada Family Action’s Doug Sharpe has called on the Prime Minister and current Health Minister Rona Ambrose to make 19 amendments to make that document less harmful, but so far there has been no public response from the government...too busy with the Duffy fallout, I suppose. Meanwhile, Canadian children are at risk from these misguided government guidelines but no major media seems to care.

More recently Health Canada (or is it Stealth Canada?) gave its approval for the abortifacient drug RU-486 to be distributed in Canada, a drug that kills babies and has been implicated in a number of deaths of women in the US. Did Mr. Harper know this was coming out just before the election or was it bureaucrats who wanted to embarrass him? Did the Health Minister know? She should have. Where is the CBC news team on this hot story? And why is there no move on the PM’s part to block this drug roll-out?

Before that, it was Gardasil, which the Conservative government chose to pay for, acquiescing to the sexual agenda of Planned Parenthood and others, the agenda which assumes that all young people will engage in premarital sex so therefore we should just make it safer for them…instead of teaching abstinence and fidelity.

Most recently, it was the early dropping of the writ, which will most definitely increase the election costs for taxpayers, followed immediately by the assertion that it would be the parties, not the taxpayers who would be paying for it. That was a patently untrue assertion and it was made on national TV, not in some murky “backroom.” The tapes are available, the math obvious. Why is the endless Duffy discussion not displaced by the revelation that the Conservative Party alone can spend an additional $25 million and then send taxpayers a bill for half? (The other parties could do the same, but probably don’t have the cash).

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s important that our PM and those who work in his office are trustworthy. If the Duffy-frenzy finally results in a confession that the PM deliberately misled the public, then it will be hard to find much sympathy for him. But right now it seems that Canada is having a bad dose of “reality TV” which, like most fantasy entertainment, is unreal, boring, and unworthy of our time. Give us something worth thinking about and something that will inform voters on the big issues.

Of course, when none of the party leaders and no major media want to discuss the killing of 100,000 babies or the perverting of our next generation, it’s hard to get past the dreary headlines we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks.

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