My New Crush

Rodney MacDonald.

God help me, I am crushing on a politician, simply because he's willing to take Stephen Harper to the mat for renegging on deals. I am totally turned on by that!

You could tell Harper was going to get in trouble somewhere along the way as Prime Minister when he called the Atlantic provinces whiners a few years back. I'm surprised this backlash hasn't happened sooner.

I grew up in Nova Scotia, a "have not" province, and I live now in Alberta, the fat cat of the country. The differences are astonishing. Out here, people complain about wait times in emergency rooms and medical procedures, they cry about crumbling infrastrcure and pressure on the education system. I can understand that... to a point.

See, in Nova Scotia, wait times for anything medical is shockingly long. I, at 31, went in for a routine mammogram a week after my initial doctor's appointment, even though there was nothing wrong. My mother has a pain in her breast, and has to wait until April 2008 before she can get a mammogram. There is no money out east for anything. No development, no sustainability, nothing. The health care and education systems are stretched beyond capacity, and there seems to be no end in sight.

It makes no sense that when a have-not province has found resources that could potentially restore them finanically, the federal government would swoop in and take most of it away. Isn't that just perpetuating the poverty these provinces face?

So to Rodney, I say bravo for fighting for what's ours. Take that smarmy bugger to the mat for perpetuating the poverty cycle. And don't forget, Harper, that your forefathers did come from the east coast at some point. Your family didn't just pop out of the ground like Alberta oil.

Patriotically Yours,
xoxoSallyt