I figure he’ll bolt. When? About the time that Barack Obama hits an approval rate of 35% sometime in the middle of December. By then Canadians will look south and think “anywhere but there,” and begin to be grateful that Stephen Harper has not bankrupted the country for the next 50 years. Ignatieff – the “he” of the first sentence – with his grand plans of a high-speed transcontinental railroad or some other crack-brained “national unity project” will have all the appeal of rotting squirrel meat.  

By then he’ll be angling for a cozy berth at the U.N., where he can go to proper parties on Park Avenue and decant the products of his formidable brain to really important people, not the provincials beating a path to Stornaway over the last few months.
 
And we can all breathe a big sigh of relief, or should. “Dodged a bullet again,” all us closeted sensible people will think, “now about down-sizing that vast liberal bureaucracy up in Ottawa?” Because we can’t afford to pay for it anymore, and they don’t do anything useful anyway, except curb growth, come up with insane notions like carbon reduction and spend vast amounts of money trying to suppress sensible ideas. Fire half of them. O.k., 40%. No, 70%.”
 
One can dream.
 
But here’s the problem with not doing that very hard thing. And this is the grim fact almost no one in the commentariat mentions.
 
We are facing a bankrupt social “safety net.”  Extrapolated from the $34-trillion Medicare mandate for those over 65 in the U.S., our unfunded health care mandate is a $3.5-trillion moral duty for which we have signed up. We have codified that duty and enticed millions of people to depend on the fact that the government will pay the bills of every boomer who sickens and dies. Add to that figure, the cost of the Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Pensions and the vast lush public sector pensions we have allowed hundreds of thousands of crooks and bagmen (er, public sector employees) to get away with for the last 20 years, and our debt will be unmanageable. It’s coming. 

This is the real political story, and it is the only political story. When you arrive at 80, death panels will not be embryonic policy recommendations bruited only in the talking shops of the left, but mandatory, and facing you, your husband, and siblings. If you’re lucky, your mother and father will have died before those dread people arrive in our hospitals, clipboard and quality of life questionnaires in hand. I couldn’t face that. Me? O.K. But my mother? I’d go to war. 

An honest leader would tell you that truth. Stephen Harper knows it, but can’t say so because he’d call out the madmen of the left, and sensible government will be dead for another decade. 

If Michael Ignatieff is as smart as everyone thinks he is – everyone but me, that is – he’d do the right thing and face that music. A real leader of the opposition would. But he’s not.  He’s a playboy, to whom Park Avenue calls.  The sooner he goes, the better. 

Elizabeth Nickson is a Canadian freelance journalist. More of her articles, follow this link.