“News reports suggest that Mr. Netanyahu this time is serious about finding a two-state solution for his country and the Palestinians, and that he insisted on the one-year time frame for the talks.”
What a load of nonsense from those “news reports,” which formed the basis for this false assertion in a column that appeared on these pages in 2010. Anyone who has followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s career knows he doesn’t really favour a two-state solution, periodic declarations of his to the contrary. He wouldn’t even extend a settlement freeze to allow the talks to start, stiffing the Obama administration.
Mr. Netanyahu knows he has the Obama crowd right where he wants them – helpless before the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and pro-Israeli pressure groups. So apologies to readers for letting hope stand in the way of clinical analysis.
Here’s another blooper, this time around the Harper government’s decision to scrap the long-form census. “The census will lodge itself in a corner of the electorate’s collective memory as a talisman for what the Harperites might do if given a freer rein and, as such, has ruined what little chance they had of achieving a majority.” Wrong. Nothing dents the 35 per cent (give or take three points) of the electorate that’s so solidly Conservative that nothing will shake its allegiance.
Here’s another: “If possible, however, the Conservatives would prefer to have an election before the 2011 budget, since that budget will actually require them to start making hard decisions at least on the spending side, something they’ve never done.” Wrong and wrong.
Conservatives are happy to carry on in power long after the budget. With a Senate majority of their own trained seals, they can pass just about everything they want. As for the bit about “hard decisions,” this is a government determined not to make those kind of hard decisions. Indeed, ministers have been signalling to expect none of them in the budget.
Speaking of budgets, why does anyone believe five- to seven-year forecasts of the kind offered by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and provincial ministers such as Dwight Duncan of Ontario. They are invariably wrong, often by a great deal, as you would expect with a long-range prediction. They shouldn’t even be mentioned in this column.
A column about a secession referendum in Scotland was all very interesting but quite wrong, since the Scottish nationalists never held one. They chickened out, knowing they would lose. Another column said the Harper government intended to “cut” foreign aid. In real terms, yes, but, in absolute terms, the government will freeze the aid budget.
It was, as a column suggested, an unseemly bout of haggling that preceded the formation of a British government, but the end was satisfactory: a stable coalition. This coalition, it must be admitted, weakens the argument often advanced that minority governments (such as the Harper one) can’t or won’t make hard decisions. Britain’s Conservative-Liberal coalition has made severe cuts.
To the people of Winnipeg, an apology. It appeared the city was going to get that NHL team away from Phoenix. What wasn’t foreseen was the extraordinarily costly burden that Glendale city councillors were willing to place on their taxpayers to keep a new owner happy and the team in Phoenix.
Never underestimate, in other words, the power of stupid, local boosterism, of the kind we see from Quebec City’s mayor, who laughingly thinks Canada and his city in particular might get the Winter Olympics in 2022 and so should have a stadium built by taxpayers in the meantime.
The column failed, too, in asking the right questions often enough about the extension of Canada’s mission to Afghanistan, another example of the triumph of hope over experience, and the purchase of new fighter jets. If anyone believes that $16-billion will cover the cost of buying and maintaining this unproven piece of kit, that person should immediately get the tree-planting contract for the Arctic.
