Warren Kinsella

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Harris and Steyn

That stench emanating from your morning paper, recently, was not the transcript of Osama bin Laden’s racist, anti-Semitic harangue against assorted demons, filmed in a cave somewhere in the wilds of Afghanistan.

Nor was the stink related to a column written by the National Post’s Mark Steyn, the jolly fellow who sometimes pronounces on the inadequacies of Canadians, and Canada, from his perch in New Hampshire. Although, while we are on the subject, one of his post-911 attempts at opinion making was certainly malodorous enough: the screed titled ‘West’s moral failure at root of tragedy.’ In it, Mr. Steyn - who previously achieved distinction for referring to Chinese people as “Chinks” - uses the September 11 crimes to attack his own particular demons, i.e. people using wheelchairs.

The terrorism of September 11 was, and I very loosely quote Mr. Steyn, “a rude awakening from the indulgences of the last decade - disabled employees in wheelchairs, whom the Americans with Disabilities Act and the various lobby groups insist can do anything able-bodied people can, found themselves trapped on the 80th floor, unable to get downstairs…” Mark Steyn is not the first ideologue - on the right or left - who has attempted to make partisan use of the corpses at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. But if that snippet does not make you want to vomit, I suspect nothing will.

No, the stench to which I am referring is of more recent vintage, and it was found in virtually every newspaper in Ontario. And you paid for it. Yes, that’s right. You.

A MESSAGE OF HOPE AND ACTION, boldly declared the newspaper display ads, placed by “Your government,” as it modestly calls itself. (It may be “your” government but, as of this moment, it is certainly not mine.) Above a photograph of various people trying to appear like everyday Ontarians - actors and models, one presumes, but not one of them, tellingly, looking the least bit like a Muslim - there was reproduced a half-page of text. And every word of it, every bit of it, designed to take crass political advantage of the tragedies of September 11.

The advertisement is sickening for two reasons: cost and content. The cost of just the one that appeared in the Globe and Mail, I was cheerfully informed by someone who works there, was $46,674, exclusive of GST. “But,” noted the newspaper’s ad rep, “the government may not have paid that.” Meaning, one presumes, that “your government” may have paid more. You can bet $47,674, plus GST, that it did.

If you are now too irritated to do the math, as I was, Ontario’s Opposition Leader will assist. On the day the “Hope and Action” ad appeared, Dalton McGuinty calculated in the Legislature that, since 1995, Premier Mike Harris’ government has spent more than $234 million on advertising. Nearly a QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS. The total cost of the “Hope and Action” boondoggle, however, will be a piddling $936,000. The Common Sense Revolution, it appears, was not to be achieved through tax cuts, contrary to what had been told. It was, in fact, a clandestine plan to stimulate the economy through massive spending in the ad industry. (Mr. McGuinty, to his credit, declared that an Ontario Liberal government would render the “Hope and Action” obscenity illegal.)

But what of the content? Near the top, the advertisement boasts that Norman Inkster and Lewis MacKenzie - the former RCMP commissioner and retired Major General, respectively - had been appointed as “provincial security advisors.” While both men previously served their country very well, the display ad does not disclose what Messrs. Inkster and MacKenzie will be able to do, as private citizens, that they were unable to do when they were in bona fide positions of authority. Visualizing Mr. Inkster attempting to place Osama bin Laden under citizen’s arrest is a stretch. But not by much.

There are more announcements, most of them of the “review” and “work with” variety. One of them, a pledge to “quickly introduce legislation to increase security for documents such as birth certificates,” was actually an idea that originated with Mr. McGuinty. The Harris government merely stole it.

The ad goes on in that fashion, actually asserting that something like a $16 tax cut - originally announced in a videotape by Premier Harris, as an end-run around the media - will “protect” the “people of Ontario.” (Those are quotes. I am not making this up, unfortunately.)

If those selfsame “people of Ontario” were not as preoccupied with CNN as they are, they might have noticed the shameful ad about “Hope and Action,” which will result in neither. Chances are, however, few taxpayers are as irritated as this one.

Steyn writes periodically from his perch in New Hampshire.

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No reproduction whatsoever, in any form, without permission.