THE THRONE SPEECH AND OTHER FUN STUFF

Just to let you folks know what I have been up to lately, I have been on the political beat in Manitoba as a reporter. Fun stuff. Unfortunately, it also means no life for me and no chance to do movie reviewing anymore or any other fun stuff I've been doing. It also means having to be fair and balanced instead of completely partisan all the time, which shouldn't be too hard because I was fed up being a partisan hack having to tow a party line anyway.

The real fun I had was in covering these politicians and figuring out what was going to happen with the Throne Speech. The Liberal MP Wayne Easter was here in Manitoba and I interviewed him at the Canad Inns for a story I was doing --- along with the local radio guy who was asking him all these dull agricultural questions. Me, I wanted him to cut to the chase and tell me if we were going to have an election.

What he had to say about the Liberal plans was pretty interesting at the time. Easter said that the Liberals probably were not going to defeat the Throne Speech, that governments are rarely toppled on Throne Speeches because they're just words, and that the Liberals were going to make their decisions based on concrete proposals coming out of the speech. So that was a pretty clear indication to me that they were probably not going to push to overthrow the government right away, in spite of what these media monkeys in Ottawa were saying.

Then came Throne Speech day last week. The next day I was doing reaction stories and I got the call from MP Brian Pallister, on the line from Ottawa, telling me that Stephane Dion had just gone up to the microphones to officially chicken out on an election. Probably the most exciting time in my whole dull career covering politics.

I've heard a lot of people say the omnibus crime bill the Harper government is putting out there now is likely to be what triggers the government's defeat in the Commons, because the crime bills were held up in the Senate before. But I'm not so sure about that. I talked to MP Inky Mark and he was convinced the crime bill would go through, because a lot of work was done on the issue before. I was kind of surprised to hear that. Maybe he knows something all these media people in Ottawa don't know about the crime bill and about how likely it is to pass. Maybe the Bloc or the NDP will vote for it, I dunno. I get the impression maybe these Ottawa reporters want an election a little too much and are reading too much into the posturing of all these political parties.

Right now I am working on a big feature about the Green movement and environmental politics and the local impact that has had. I'll see how it goes.