A Mandate For Sleep

Hello dear readers. I’ve been resisting the urge to publish my rage here, but the results of the recent federal election has pushed me back into the blogosphere.

It was heartening to see the Canadian voters came to their senses nationally and voted in a Conservative majority, as did the Yukon and Nunavut, but once again, the protest vote prevailed in the NWT.

Yes, the NWT voters have given drowsy Dennis Bevington and the Narcoleptic Democratic Party another mandate for inaction. The Groucho Marxist can look forward to sucking up another four years of doing absolutely nothing for the people here.

Although the majority of people of the Beaufort Delta voted against Bevington, we still had a large number of protest votes at the polls. Trying to make some sense of this, I looked at the individual polls and found an explanation within the four polls in Inuvik.

Sandy Lee beat Bevington at all polls except for Poll 11. This is the area of town comprised of the town’s most affluent; the unionized government workers, the teachers and other professionals. These are the people who think they can afford to protest.

The sanctimonious and smug, who love to get together over their soy lattes and discuss the evils of the Conservative Party, or, at least, what they read on the Internet, when they were supposed to be working.

These are the politically-mute types who won’t put an orange sign on their house, because they can’t defend their decision, but will vote with a vengeance, so they can whisper their self-righteousness with their comrades during their 90-minute coffee breaks. The double Dippers who will gladly suck up their two government pensions that were only made safe by a fiscally-sound Conservative government. But you won’t hear them admit that.

The leadership of the Beaufort/Delta didn’t have that luxury. We went out in public in visible and vocal support of Sandy Lee and the Conservatives, because it was the right thing to do for our people -- most of the leadership, anyway.

Inuvik Town Councillor Clarence Wood went on the radio the day after the election, to brag about what he does best -- sitting on the fence. He admonished the rest of us for our partisanship with smug satisfaction. Kudos to Clarence, for having the guts to stick up for all the other cowards and fence sitters.

Three of four polls in Inuvik also realized we don’t have the luxury of a protest vote. These are the 100 people Northwind had to lay off last winter, the construction workers who saw only one new housing start in Inuvik last year, the business people who’ve had to board up their windows. These are the downtrodden the sanctimonious left is supposed to be helping.

Layton and Bevington love to campaign to the “working families” of Canada, but it seems the working families who are out of work, apparently don’t count.

The leadership of the Beau/Del will continue to do the work our MP is supposed to do, as we’d hate to awaken the slumbering socialist. With our new paved roads, Arctic Research Centre, new airport design for Tuk, the new community hall and youth centre in Ulukhuktok, and construction beginning this fall on the Tuk-Inuvik highway, and numerous other projects, we clearly have done quite well without Bevington.

While we are still in desperate need of a treatment centre, day care and many other things here, we will have to get in line – right behind 167 other ridings, who had the smarts to do the right thing.

Thanks for nothing, Dennis and the Dippers. You can all go back to sleep now.