What color was his tie?

Of course we turned on the CBC to watch our Prime Minister speak. High drama. And did you notice his tie? Liberal leaders are always wearing red ties. I think it's part of some oath they swear when they become leaders of the Liberal party. And did you see? That tie was such a deep burgundy that I'm not sure it qualifies as red anymore. And it definitely had little blue dots on it. That Paul - he was making a sartorial comment, distancing himself from the Liberal party.

Harper wore too much makeup and he needs a new haircut.
I love Gilles Duceppe. It's kind of cute that he can't say 'federalism'. Of all the words, you'd think he could pronounce that one in English.
Layton looked fabulous. I hope that the Liberals will play nice with him in exchange for some changes to the budget.

A quick recap for those who lost track (or live in the US and haven't heard anything about it):
In 1995, Quebec was deliberating once again whether to separate from Canada.
They voted to stay but the vote was terribly close.
The federal government (Jean Chretien at the time headed up a Liberal majority government) set up a program to promote federalism in Quebec.
Large chunks of money from the program were funneled to Liberal friendly ad agencies and consulting firms who did little or no work in exchange.

Sheila Fraser, our Auditor General, dug up all the details and published them in her annual report. Much consternation among the government and finally Justice Gomery was appointed to head a commission to investigate what the heck happened and where the money went. AND, who knew about it? You see, our current Prime Minister, Paul with the burgundy tie, was Finance Minister at the time. And as the sordid details come out, day after day, the Liberals are sliding in the polls and Harper is thinking that maybe this is his chance to force an election and win.

There's no doubt that Jane taxpayer is livid, and that's why the government is sliding in the polls. Here's evidence of the government wasting our $, and rewarding their cronies. And they were being so darned arrogant about it. How could they have thought they'd get away with it? CBC has an interesting article about that.

I've also been thinking about the numbers. Ms. Fraser found that $100 million was squandered. An awfully large amount, indeed. But government numbers are always big. Annual revenues are approx $350 billion. In 2004/05 the federal government reported a $5.9 billion surplus. These large numbers always boggle the mind. I think that's one of the reasons this makes us so mad. We know that this is about more money than we're likely going to see in our lifetime.

So was funneling money to agencies in exchange for no work wrong? Of course.
Do we want to get all the details? Of course. Let Gomery finish.
Should someone be in jail? Absolutely.
Should the Liberal party be hit over the head? Ahyup.
Should we go to the polls now? No.