Getting Down And Nasty In A Week Of Miserable News And Weather

A Comment from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

For better or worse – probably worse – I have always been one of these people whose mood shifts with the weather.

So I may be one of the last people who should be picking up the morning paper to bad news during a week, and I’m talking about this past second week of April when we should have been enjoying a little spring, but instead we had ice pellets, puddles of freezing water and winds so chilly you’re were forced to put your winter coat on.

Enough of the cold, icy stuff.

Then you open up the newspaper or turn on the radio and television news to reports about hundreds super-rich Canadians shovelling their money into off-shore havens to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, and a federal government who claimed they didn’t know about these individuals doing that.

Next day we are finding out about one of Canada’s major banks – the Royal Bank of Canada which enjoyed a 71 per cent increase in its profits over a 12-month period in 2011 and 2012 – using the same government’s foreign workers program to have some of its own employees train people from other countries to replace them in their jobs. Over the next 48 hours, we are learning how many other businesses have been doing the same thing right under the nose of a prime minister and federal human resources minister who acted surprised by all of this as they finally had no choice but to say they would “reform” the program.

As if that wasn’t enough, CBC broadcast a report about the federal government cutting danger pay and other benefits to Canadian soldiers still serving in Afghanistan. While I’m asking what ever happened to this “support the troops” mantra the Harper government and its supporters were so high on, Romeo Dallaire, a former Canadian major-general now serving in the senate, charged that the “decision to cut soldiers’ danger pay is ethically wrong, downright mean and disloyal.”

Downright mean and disloyal, indeed. Throw in dishonest or deceitful for a government that always claimed to be so adamant about the need to spend more money on our military.

Combine all of that with the ongoing reports about cuts to environmental protection programs and tar sand pipelines that probably won’t get an open and full environmental assessment, even though there are plans to run them through a Great Lakes basin that is a source of drinking water for millions of people.

There was also the diluted chemo drugs, the daily sabre rattling from that little psycho in North Korea while he’s playing around with rocket launchers and nukes, and another horrible case of cyber bullying that led to the death of Halifax teen Rehtaeh Parsons, and still temperatures remained down around freezing while icy rain and snow pellets fell on the ground.

A few daffodils would raise a smile.

So there I was toward the end of the week calling a provincial environment minister an “old dinosaur” and using words like “retile” and “slime” to describe the executive director of a bank with a Leonard Cohen CD, featuring lyrics like “everybody knows the dice are loaded, … everybody knows the fight was fixed,” playing in the background.

Not that all that many people seemed to be bothered by my rants. There was one person who emailed me with a “wow” reaction to my attack on the environment minister and another good reader was little upset with a few of the off-colour words I used on the bank executive.

But for the most part, people reacted to my anger with anger of their own toward many of the same targets. Maybe that also says something about the temper of the times and the weather.

My only regret, other than any upset my words caused to some good friends and supporters of this site, is that I broke at least a few of my rules – never post something when I am really angry and haven’t given myself a chance to take few deep breaths, and don’t violate a standard of civil discourse I have encouraged and promoted from the start for this site.

I shouldn’t be blaming some of my online conduct on the weather either. Although it would be nice if the week ahead were a little more spring like and we get a little more good news for a change.

How about a report that the Harper government has fallen so far down in the polls that it would have an impossible time even winning a minority government in the next federal election?

That, along with enough warmth and sunshine to finally let the daffodils and tulips bloom, would really make my day.

(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conversation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)