# 30 A STOMACH STRONACH RETCHING DEFECTION

‘Member the fairy tale about Jack and the Beanstalk. He was supposed to take a cow into town and sell it for cash to buy much needed food. Instead he traded the one possession his poor half-starved mother had for a handful of worthless beans.

The fairy tale is make belief. A fanciful story that starts out with ‘once upon a time’ and concludes with ‘all lived happily ever after.’ These are not stories about real life, and anyone who thinks real life can mirror the magic in fairy tales is bloody out to lunch. But despite that, here in real life, in real politics, here only in Canada, we have Belinda Stronach.

‘Member how we all held out hope when she waltzed onto the political scene that here, at last, was the coming of a political Messiah. We quietly contemplated in our inner recesses that here might be someone we could ALL respect. We were so encouraged to see her boldness. When she arrived on the political scene we were so confident that here at last was someone who was not motivated by course greed and blind political ambitions. With her wealth, we nodded our heads in unison and said among ourselves, "Money, she has, so here at long last is someone who is NOT doing this for love of money. And that being the case, she must be doing it for love of country."

"At last," we said with naïve fixation, "here is a fresh, pristine politician with wit, wisdom, and integrity and leadership ability. A new and separate entity, untouched by greed and free from the contamination and subsequent disease of filthy politics. A person of youth with enough personal confidence that she will not easily cave-in to corruption. Self-preserving acts of lies and deceit cannot touch her because she has better reasons to be here than salary and pension benefits.

Not only the Conservatives looked to Ms Stronach for hope and cleaner politics – all parties saw possibilities for better things. But it was too good to be true. How could we have known that she was contaminated by a fairy tale about a boy, a cow, a beanstalk, and a golden egg. She took our faith, hope, and goodwill to the hill and foolishly traded it all in for a bit of power and notoriety in the form of a cabinet post.

That was a display of lack of wisdom on her part, but the ensuing news conference revealed more stupidity. In case we weren’t disgusted enough to puke we then listened to her tell us (albeit without visible remorse or emotion) how difficult her defection was. Meanwhile, the P.M. could barely wait for his turn to speak to let the whole world know that here on display was a popular politician that traded a classic bundle of goods (her integrity) for a proffered cabinet post. If she was the lady I originally thought she was, she would have said. "I am most grateful for the offer but I truly must refuse as I cannot jump to the front of the queue when there are so many good fellows and gals who have been working their butts off for months to earn a cabinet post."

And you know, even if Stronach didn’t know any better because of her youth and inexperience, Martin should have known enough to keep his mouth shut rather than bragging to the press how easily he was able to dupe her.

There can be no doubt about it. Corruption in Canadian politics is propagating faster than a clutch of rabbits. The rapid development of Belinda’s political life is as much a fairy tale as Jack and the Beanstalk. I’m sure she is well aware of the parallels. Like foolish Jack boy, she traded in her integrity for a cabinet position and now she is clamoring up her bean-stalk-ladder to grab the golden goose for the Liberals. But this is real life, not the stuff of fairy tales. Someone may chop down that ladder before she gets back on the ground.

As for me, I normally don’t take much interest in politics. It matters little to me who stays in power or who wins the next election, but I do have to wonder. Is it wise to make someone a major stake-holder in government when they show no ethical conscience in their reckless rampage to get to the top of the dung heap?