I think I have mentioned in the past that I have a somewhat, let’s say, eclectic taste in music. Well, I have a similar dysfunction when it comes to movies.
For example, I went through a Rutger Hauer phase. I couldn’t get enough of his movies: Hitcher, Wanted Dead or Alive, LadyHawke, etc. I have since tried to dust off those movies and they were quite cheesy. Then again, I used to walk around in a green trenchcoat with a ponytail and black army boots. So, I guess cheese is relative.
But I digress.
I was just watching the PM-in-waiting Jim Flaherty boasting of the $14 billion surplus run up by the federal government this year and a scene from a Rutger movie popped in my mind.
In this scene, Rutger has a bad guy by the throat and the latter is saying something like “I got you the gun, I got you the money, what more do you want?” and Rutger replies in that eerie maniacal voice “More” (the link is to another weird clip).
Anyway, that’s what I felt like when O’Flaherty pumped his chest. When he said with all nobility that paying down the debt was his duty to future generations of Canadians in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver (oops, I ad libbed that last part).
I thought why not a little ‘more’ for Atlantic Canada.
Oh, I know it would be downright anti-Conservative to give grants to companies (unless you are an auto plant in Ontario, an aerospace plant in Quebec or a biofuels plant in Western Canada) so how about a little more ED related funding in other areas? Ontario gets three times as much R&D funding as New Brunswick (in per capita terms), so why not a few bucks there? Maybe if we had some real life sciences R&D going on we could stimulate more private sector investment.
Or how about funding the Atlantic Gateway? Maybe it might help redress that whole St. Lawrence seaway project that turned the Port of Montreal into the busiest port in all of Canada. Maybe we could see an inland port in Dieppe or some such thing. After all, wasn’t it David Emmerson that bragged about the $575 million in federal dollars for the Pacific Gateway and said “this is just the start”?
Heck, why not a little 50/50 economic development side deal with the ever chipper S. Graham? They put in a couple of hundred million, you put in a couple of hundred million and you hold your nose and put your Ontario MPs on hold when S. Graham attracts an auto plant with those purly whites and that razor sharp nose – er wit, I meant wit.
But no. If we did that (O’Flaherty would say), we’d have to give it to ‘them all’ and we wouldn’t be able to reduce the deficit. And afterall, you ungrateful Maritimers should quit your complaining. I topped up the EI program by $50 million and gave you a new Equalization deal. What’s your problem.
Back to Rutger. At the end of the aforementioned movie (not the Hitcher, Wanted Dead or Alive), our hero trots out the terrorist with a grenade in his mouth. Rutger, naturally, has his finger in the pin and is walking Malik al-Rahim along like a dog on a leash. Then he asked the FBI what the bonus is for bringing old Rahim in alive. $50k he is told. Rutger, in a line that should’ve gone down in movie lore says “F$%# the bonus” and pulls the pin.
There’s no point to that little ditty. My blog. My boring movie stories.