Stephen Harper's Great Ice Storm Mistake

This is what Toronto looked like this evening from the Island ferry. The sky clearing, the ice breaking up in the bay. Glowing in the setting sun like a city whose nightmare is over.

Except for the huge chunks of ice threatening to slide off buildings and smash into the streets below, and for all the people still without power from Ontario to New Brunswick. 

But even though it's been EIGHT days since the massive ice storm hit, and about a MILLION people in THREE provinces were left in the cold and the darkness, at the height of the holiday period.

All Stephen Harper has had to say about this disaster is still these TWO miserable tweets...



Framed for your consideration in all their callous INDIFFERENCE. 

Which is so frankly bizarre, it can only mean that either he didn't think that a million Canadians freezing in the dark was a REAL emergency.

And has lost his judgement.

And his marbles...



As his deeply disturbing Christmas message seems to suggest.

And is now in such a state of total psychological collapse, due to the accumulated stress of the Senate scandal, he cannot be exposed to the public lest he be deemed unfit to remain in office.

Or that he simply doesn't give a damn, because he's planning to resign soon anyway. Or because it didn't happen in Calgary, and he can't feel the pain of the Eastern Bastards. 

Or all of the above...



But whatever the reason, Great Icy Leader has made a BIG mistake. Like his Con buddy Rob Ford who refused to declare a state of emergency so he personally wouldn't lose any more power.

"Everybody's agreed this is not a state of emergency," Ford said, adding that the entire city needed to be paralyzed for that to happen.

But on Sunday, Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly told CBC News Network on Sunday that his advice to the mayor was to declare a state of emergency. Kelly said he felt it was important psychologically to let citizens know the city was taking it seriously.

But who also forgot that in a time of disaster, even a symbolic declaration can have a big psychological impact. Give those suffering from the unique horror of an ice storm hope that all is being done to help them. 

For while it cannot be compared to the Great Ice Storm of 1998, which I lived through in Montreal, there was a lot of suffering.

An if it felt like an emergency for so many, and the hundreds of thousands of police and rescue personnel and Hydro workers and volunteers who struggled to cope with the situation, governments should have considered it an emergency as well.

So needless to say a LOT of people are not happy. You hear that anger everywhere. You read it in the newspapers.

Your ice storm headline asks the $64,000 question: How is this not an emergency? When 800 traffic lights are out and 300,000 households (not 300,000 people) have no power or heat during a deep freeze, most reasonable people would say we had an emergency that needed resolution ASAP.

Mayor Rob Ford says a declaration of emergency would cause panic. Torontonians don’t panic easily, but they despair of a refusal to take an emergency seriously.



This is madness! People freezing in the dark, Toronto Hydro cutting branches off trees, the army sitting around complaining about their new uniforms, Mayor Ford not declaring a state of emergency because he has no authority to and would look weak if he had to ask the deputy mayor to do it, the real mayor too busy holidaying to pick up the phone to declare a state of emergency and call in the army, who are good at cutting branches off trees. What kind of dump is this?

And all of this will come back to haunt both Ford AND Stephen Harper...



We'll make sure of that eh?

Golly. Isn't that great? As if those two Cons hadn't been hammered enough in 2013. 

Now along comes Mother Nature, and makes Ford look like a bumbling opportunist, handing out fridge magnets in the middle of a disaster.

And makes Harper look like a callous monster, too damaged and dangerous to remain in office.

Hey, who said Winter wasn't BEAUTIFUL?



Or dare challenge my glowing New Year's prediction eh?

The sun is setting on the Con regime. 

We're going to club them like seals in 2014.

And after the long darkness of that filthy Harperland.

Our future has never looked brighter...

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